Entertaining, but unfair... (The Weakest Link)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	The Weakest Link
Date:	13/02/01 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining, Anne Robinson

Disadvantages: too much reliance on "luck"

I suppose it was a novel idea – get a group of strangers, force them to act as a team, answering questions and banking money, and vote who each member thought had performed worst throughout the previous round out of the quiz into a winner takes all situation. Add a £10,000 theoretical top prize, and a rude and abrupt question master (in the shape of Anne Robinson) to set it apart from other quizzes, and the top dogs at the BBC must have been rubbing their hands with glee.

To be fair – it’s a very entertaining programme. Trying to guess who is going to be voted off at the end of the round, and make the walk of shame is great fun. What is probably even more funny are those contestants who think that they can “outsmart” Anne Robinson with some sort of witty comeback line, which I have never seen work.

While this may sound like a rave review – it’s not really. I’m frustrated by how much luck comes into the quiz. The variation in difficulty in questions inside one round is amazing with one person getting a 50 – 50 question (“Which is darker – black or white?”) and another given a very hard question (“What is the chemical composition of ethanol?”).

The contestants are also at fault with a lot of them voting strategically (or simply in a sexist manner), rather than for the person who was the worst contestant in a particular round. I’ve not seen the BBC1 version (is it much different to that on BBC2?) but the average prize fund is £3,000 or less. While £3,000 is not to be sneezed at, some simple tactics could probably increase this dramatically. Are the contestants given a chance to put together some sort of strategy before the show? After all they are meant to be operating as a team for the first part of the programme!

So the question is : would I want to take part in The Weakest Link? The answer would have to be “No” in this case. IR
17;ll sit and watch it, and find it very entertaining, but I would rather take part in a programme which relies less on pot luck such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? As a final comment – is there really room for two versions of the same programme on BBC tv? Should they not concentrate on one version, rather than saturate the airwaves?

Summary: