Never Mind the Full Stops

Contents

Host

Julian Fellowes

Broadcast

BBC Four, 2006-

Synopsis

Panel game about English usage: basically Eats, Shoots and Leaves - The Game Show. 30 minutes of celebrities tut-tutting at anyone who happens to be unfortunate enough to be under 35 whose ever typed 'Where r u?' in one of those horrid mobile phone things.

One of the games is called "Apostrophe Now", which is basically "fill in the missing apostrophe and remove incorrect ones", which sound's like the worst idea for a quiz ever... and is. Participant's are also asked to rewrite a sentence using euphemism's or lipograms, provide the definition's for new wordz (such as: "no brainer" and "offline" which arent exactly challenging), and answer grammatical questions in a final quick-fire round. There are also Quote... Unquote-style discussion bit's and and a mnemomic-inventing challenge which can be used to break tie's.

It comes as no surprise to find that this show was devised by "The BBC FED Team". It feels like a concept devised by committee ("Quick chaps, grammatical pedantry is really hot this season! Let's make a game show about it!"). It also feels more suited to radio, but worst of all it's slow and boring, enlivened only by the occasional bon mot from the wonderfully cantancerous chairman.

On the upside, it's nice to see a BBC Four panel game with decent production values (needlessly garish backdrop notwithstanding) and a decent sized studio audience. That said, they surely only made a second series to spite us after we said it wouldn't get one. That's pedants for you.

Inventor

The BBC FED Team

See also

Weaver's Week review

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