I hate Only Connect – but I can’t stop watching it ...Middle East

I endure a period of inner conflict in which I consider sitting at the table and then remember that’s a ridiculous idea – I am, after all, a millennial with a nine-to-five. The sofa calls; I enter the bargaining phase. Is there something else I could put on? My dinner is rapidly getting cold, so at this point I tend to skip to acceptance. Twenty-five minutes later I am shouting things like “BOB MARLEY AND CHICKENPOX” or “DOLLY PARTON AND CHLAMYDIA” at my screen, which is blazoned with bizarre “missing vowel” clues like “BBM RLY NDC H CKNP X”, and my cat is staring at me as though I have gone mad.

Only Connect, which first aired on BBC4 in 2008, is extremely popular. In 2021 it reached almost three million viewers. I don’t doubt that plenty of people sit down specially to watch it – but I can’t be the only person among that large number who is there in limbo, patiently waiting to get intellectually annihilated by a load of precocious 18-year-olds and finding the whole thing supremely frustrating.

Only Connect’s ‘missing vowels’ round (Screen grab from BBC iPlayer)

Channel 4 documentaries have lost the plot again

Read More

Yet unlike University Challenge it’s also theoretically work-out-able. This, presumably, is what has enabled it to transition from BBC4 to primetime BBC2 (its host, Victoria Coren-Mitchell may have the hair of Cat Deeley but you can tell her primary calling is international poker, where she has won around as many dollars as Only Connect has viewers, rather than all-smiles game show presenting).

Connections among groups of clues are too convoluted (Photo: BBC screen grab)

A cheat's guide to being good at University Challenge

Read More

This is all well and good – if the questions actually make sense. But they are becoming increasingly inconsistent and imprecise. The first two rounds, in which players try to identify the connection between a group of four clues and then to name the next clue in a cryptic sequence, are often so obscure, the connections so convoluted or tangential, that nobody lands on an answer. Last week, the show made headlines as viewers railed against the “worst question ever”: a tangled mess of Latin names for body parts linked, allegedly, by the word “little”, which I still cannot understand well enough to explain here. Judging by the faces of the contestants, nor could they.

By contrast, on University Challenge there are many more instances in which contestants don’t know that they do know the answer, or, even better, don’t know that they don’t. There is more surprise, more joy and more satisfaction.

Nope… no idea (Photo: BBC screen grab)

Then we reach the aforementioned missing vowels round, whose quickfire nature ups the stakes – but which becomes increasingly ridiculous as the setters run out of meaningful categories. They can have “Musical legends of the 20th century and infectious diseases” for free, but I can’t promise it wouldn’t irritate even me.

So why can’t I stop watching it, really? Well, obviously, because I, along with the rest of its viewers, secretly believe I’ll be able to do it better than the contestants. Then, when I get proved wrong every time, my fragile ego has no choice but to come back for more.

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( I hate Only Connect – but I can’t stop watching it )

Also on site :

• Meet the Jewish students speaking to US lawmakers about Columbia’s protests
• The treaty that kept India and Pakistan in check is gone. Now what?
• Kremlin comments on ceasefire plans after Ukrainian drone strikes