The Third Degree to return 25th March

For those who haven't heard it before, the Third Degree is an excellent Radio 4 quiz show, presented by the Now Show's Steve Punt.

Each week, Steve visits a different British university, and the quiz pits a team of three students against a team of three lecturers, or 'dons' as they are known, in seven rounds of quizzing. The three dons teach the subjects the three students are studying.

Of the seven rounds, three are 'specialist' rounds, with the student facing the don teaching their subject in a round of straight questions. Each are asked about three questions each; if the dons drop a question, the students are offered it for a bonus, but the dons aren't allowed this for student droppages.

The other rounds include a round of each team getting alternative questions, which opens the show, a round requiring the teams to name as many answers as they can within a period of time (for example, how many fruits can you name in 30 seconds), and the final round is a straight buzz-off between the two teams.

But the highlight of the show is 'Highbrow-Lowbrow', in which all six players are given a key word (for example, yellow, or tree), and that key word has two questions, one highbrow, the other lowbrow. The player must chose which they want to attempt. The catch is, the question they reject, their opposite number has to answer. If that sounds complicated, you probably need to hear it for real to understand it properly.

Usually, the dons win. In the two six episode series we've had so far, the students have only won one game, with students from Warwick University, including UC alumni Sumukh Kaul and James Wheatley, triumphing over the dons by an eleven point margin. The students have lost all the other eleven episodes, except for the students of Stirling University, who managed a draw.

Overall, I've enjoyed the first two series of the show, and hopefully the third will be just as interesting. It begins on March 25th at 3pm, in the slot soon to be vacated by Brain of Britain, with a repeat on Saturday nights at 11pm. I hope to provide a short summary every week, in an attempt to get more stuff going on on this blog.