As you may have gathered, the revived Fifteen-to-One has been back for a second series the past few weeks. It was the Grand Final last Friday, and I have yet to find a review of it in any of the usual places, so here is a quick summary of it for yous.
Now, due to work commitments, I wasn't able to catch as much of this series as I did the first earlier this year. I caught a week's worth of shows during my week off, and recorded our friend Dave Clark's appearance a couple of week's ago and Friday's final. The fifteen highest scoring winners out of the thirty-nine came back to fight for the £40,000 cash prize.
Top of the finals board was serial quizzer Mark Kerr, whose previous achievements include a Brain of Britain finalist, an Only Connect semi-finalist, a WWTBAM? Thirteen Clubber (£250,000 winner) and he was Pat Gibson's Phone-a-Friend on his Million Pound question! I caught his show during my week off, and witnessed him run up a grand total of 251 in the final, the highest score of the revival so far, and top of the finals board by a long way.
The fifteen contestants in the Grand Final were: Jim Ferns, David Nickeas, Gerard Mackay, Peter Watson, Ben Holmes, Jane Kendrick, Peter Styles, Mr Kerr, Dave Tagg (conqueror of Dave C.), Jascha Elliott, Andy Killeen, Pat Lucas, John Wheeler, Gareth Aubrey (2006 UC champion with Manchester) and Joanna Craig.
The first round was very high quality, as you'd expect. Only Mr Elliott, who was second on the finals board, got both his questions wrong and was thus eliminated. Of the remaining 14 contestants, nine got both questions right and went into the second round with all three lives intact.
The second round was where the red mist began to descend, as things became frantic as the contestants began nominating each other like mad. Dave Tagg was the great survivor of the round, being nominated multiple times, and clinging on to his final life on several occasions. His luck eventually ran out, and he finished fifth. Ben Holmes was last to be eliminated, finishing fourth.
So, the final three were: Gerard Mackay, Peter Watson and Mark Kerr.
The final round: forty questions, all on the buzzer; last man standing or whoever has most points when all the questions are gone wins. Mark raced out to an early lead, but lost two lives on some unlucky buzzes, and thus allowed the other two to catch up. All three then swapped questions for a while; at the halfway point, Mark was narrowly ahead. But then, with seventeen questions left, Mark buzzed in wrongly for a third time, lost his final life, and bowed out graciously in third place.
So, it was down to Gerard and Peter. Gerard was in the lead at this point, and the two men managed to survive to the end of the deck without losing all their lives. Though Peter often managed to reduce Gerard's lead to a couple of questions, he was never quite able to overtake him. At the end of the round, Gerard had 172 points to Peter's 132.
So, Gerard Mackay won the final, and the £40,000 Jackpot. Well done to him!
So, that's that then. Even though I didn't see as much of this series as I did of the first, I really enjoyed what I did see. It flows much better now that they've moved the pointless third break from halfway through Round 1 to (roughly) halfway through Round 2. And Sandi T. seems to have settled in nicely too, using the Pointless method of dragging the obligatory chat out across the rounds, rather than clumping it all up at the start of each round.
I know the revival has come in for criticism from traditionalists, and I can understand why, but I've really enjoyed what I've seen of it so far. I do hope they will make a third series; if they, I may consider popping along to give it a go myself. Why not?
I'll be back on Monday with my usual UC write-up; Cassiopeia confirmed this afternoon it's between Liverpool and Glasgow.
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