While this jury still hesitates over its verdict on King
of the Nerds UK, we discuss Hive Minds, the Fiona Bruce-fronted BBC Four
replacement for Only Connect.
Google says: A hive mind is a group mind with almost complete loss (or lack) of individual identity. A bit harsh. |
Oh sorry! We meant to write
"lateral-thinking-quiz" there, but "replacement for Only Connect",
well, it just spilled out. Goodness. Still, just under seven years after Only
Connect began, BBC Four have decided to see if there was anything else in the
quiz category worth trying.
Excuse me a moment, because this is still a review of
Hive Minds, but I feel a need to ask an otherwise unasked question. Only
Connect began nearly seven years ago, and is not in any sense, a recent success
story. Its audience has been steadily growing, and for a number of years it was
very often the most-watched programme each week on its channel.
Why, then, has it taken so very long for BBC Four to attempt any other game or quiz programme?
From the perspective of the UK landscape, maybe most game/quizzes seem to
vulgar for the generally sophisticated BBC Four style, but OC was a perfect
example that there is an appetite for an enhanced quigame, a BBC Four quigame.
I say this with half an eye on the world scene. There are
huge cult successes like The Genius, WIDM, and De Slimste, that would fit more
naturally on BBC Four than anywhere else on the UK channels. We see around the
world, broadcasters taking risks, and often succeeding with, complicated,
elegant, intelligent quizzes and games. There is a channel, in BBC Four,
generally happy to risk alienating the mainstream viewer in favour of an
occasional quiet, excellent, hit, and with a proven success on their books.
None of them are quiz books. None. |
In 2012, VCM could joke about being simultaneously the best and worst quiz on BBC4. Now, she lives on BBC2 and space was opened on BBC4 for something new, something impressively different.
Yet instead, 6.5 years after the first clue was revealed,
BBC gave us The Quizeum, a show I literally couldn't watch enough of to review
coherently, and now Hive Minds. And so I want to set this complaint out
separate from the review proper: Hive
Minds is hugely, hugely uninnovative. Almost everything about it has been
carbon-copied or nearly-carbon-copied (silicon-copied?) from OC. There is no
need to list, here, it will take enough restraint from the reviewer not to mention it in every sentence of the review proper.
Perhaps, one would argue, there is no need to change what
works, and indeed perhaps. This would irritate me less if Hive Minds were being
made three or four years ago, or today, but accompanied by some other,
more-experimental offering(s) from BBC Four. But it isn't, and so a general
moan must foreshadow actual assessment of the programme.
This author then, as an admittedly staunch supporter of the quigame, is a little miffed that BBC4 has taken so long to rekindle its relationship with the genre, and is a little saddened further that the offering is so meagre.
And now the review proper.
Unremarkable titles, and a point early for the best
original music this author has heard on a quiz in a number of years. Host Fiona
Bruce, rather than being an
entertaining-person-who-turns-out-to-be-knowledgeable, is a
knowledgeable-person-who-turns-out-to-be-entertaining.
It is actually some accomplishment to be neither so
similar in style to VCM that one could criticise, nor different but so much
worse that one could criticise. Bruce manages this rather well; presenting the
persona of slightly-over-excited-teacher: keen on the facts, but also often on
the verge of laughter. We acknowledge her positive first impression on us,
(something VCM didn't manage) although warn that it takes time for a host to
become 'great' in the way that Only Connect's has.
We meet the teams, who are always three Only Connect players
sat in a different order, and then before round 1, a demonstration of the
'Hives' that make up the show's USP.
Euuuuuuugh. |
And, well, now seems about the time to mention it: there
is a massive problem with Hive Minds. I will explain shortly why the problem is
so awful, but let me first explain why it is a problem.
The Hive graphics are awful. They are simply horrid,
firstly aesthetically they are not nice, but much more importantly, they are too
visually noisy to be read easily. Each letter, in white, is surrounded by a
black outline on all sides, then brownish shadow on some sides, then a hexagon,
which is not monochrome but instead has a white light effect across the top,
and on the top two sides. Then, as well as each hexagon having a depth-fade
effect, to make it look like an individual object rather than part of a
connected grid, there is a dark-brown and light-brown outline around each
hexagon, meaning that, on the visual path between the white of one letter, and
the white of the next, there are around 8 other colours to be seen, many of
them paler versions of the other colours around. The grid is difficult to read.
It is quite difficult to follow out an answer once you have been told where it
is. It is exceptionally difficult to scan for an answer, or for a few answers.
Other commenters have suggested the font should be
squarer, and perhaps in lower-case rather than CAPS. This author agrees on both
fronts, but thinks that by far the most important thing is to reduce the amount
of visual noise between grid cells. Regardless, the problem is very precise:
the grid needs to be easier to read.
Why is this awful? Perhaps it is already obvious to the
reader: but Hive Minds ought to stand strong on its play-along value. Few viewers
will have knowledge comparable to the on-screen players, (some may, of course)
but the Hive - like the lateral thinking on OC, or, to a lesser degree, the
guessability of questions on UC - serves as a great leveller, allowing the uninformed
to, occasionally, feel the satisfaction of accomplishing a great move just like
the ones they see the teams pull-off in the studio.
The terrible graphics massively reduce this appeal, and
so reduce the appeal of the whole show, but in particular the appeal to the
casual viewer. I would argue that OC saw its audience grow, not by becoming more
mainstream in its question matter, but by making the lateral thinking gradually
a more important part of the programme than the general knowledge. Hive minds
will struggle to pull in a less BBC4-ish viewer if it can't do something along
the same lines.
Anyway, we arrive at round 1: the answering some
questions round. The questions are usually combine two different (or quite
different) fields in a way which allows for a lot of false-leads to be set in
the hive. And lots of false-leads are set. Over time the grid diminishes, as do
the points, and teams buzz in to stop their individual clock before answering,
much like that other programme. Incorrect answers are handed over with all
clues revealed for just 1 point, much like... you get the idea.
Throughout, except for a 1 second flash at the start, the
grid is presented at the bottom of the screen, at about 1/3 the size it is when
in 'full'. This is too small, and combines with the problems mentioned above
about readability.
A R1a question in progress. |
Onto round 1b: after two normal questions, the teams get
two double questions: this time there are two answers in the hive: you might be
looking for an inventor and their invention, an artist and their work, etc.
This is immediately harder because two answers need to be located in the hive,
and also subtlety harder because the questions are now of the sort to not have
a unique pair of answers, so scanning the hive *will* be necessary.
These questions are no less fun for the audience, but
they are definitely going to result in fewer points in general, so it feels
wrong for them to be coming second*.
A R1b question in progress. |
Onto round 2: here hives will contain three answers, again from a larger set
of possibles. Instead of decreasing points-over-time, this round offers 1 point
per answer found in 45 seconds (although an incorrect submission will end the
time immediately), and instead of letting them talk like normal participant,
the team are separated to 3 podiums, where they all stare downwards and pass
control around confusingly until the time is up. The studio is too small for
both teams to do this at once, and the choosing of categories requires they
alternate, so we see 3 awkward changeover cuts, not done nearly as well as they
are on... yes.
This is apparently almost all of the Hive Minds studio. |
This round irritates the reviewer a little, because we
don't see any reason it is more entertaining
than the first round. Sure, it's different, and one would likely criticise for
a lack of variety if another round of straight questions were played... but the
twist here of separating the teams isn't adding anything for the audience -
it's just a quieter version of the questions we saw before, only with one more
answer.
Round 3 is the Superhive, and teams are asked if they
want the A-hive or the B-hive, a much better joke than water-wall ever...
anyway. The aim here is to find answers to a category in a larger hive. This
time the team work together to keep things thematically different from round 2,
and there's an extra challenge: the answers have to completely fill the grid,
using every letter exactly once. This seems about as difficult as sorting 16
clues into 4 connected... never mind - but it *is* made more difficult in a key
way.
The |
On the connecting programme, correct-looking incorrect
wall guesses exists: often a set will have 5 potential members, often a
faux-set of 4 will exist among the others. This is distracting, but the
distraction is no more than a "ooohh yes... oh no!" back-and-forth:
it can happen a few times and it doesn't set the team back very much at all if
they set off on the wrong path.
Contrast the Superhive where again there are false leads:
potentially correct answers that don't fit into the perfect solution but do fit
into the chosen category. However, there is no intermediate feedback - a wrong
answer entered into the grid will stay put, and cause problems with trying to
find other answers later on. Teams can manually erase the answers, but the time
taken to realise they've made a mistake is lost. Here the process of realising
is more "hmmmm... maybe.... hmmmmm... no, this can't be it".
There are problems with doing things this way: it's
frustrating for the audience and team, and it's somewhat unfair: luck can be a
big factor in noticing the right answers first. There is some skill, for both
viewer and player, in the knack of being able to figure out that a
configuration is truly impossible, which is a bit of fun, and I think this
could be an 'interesting difference' rather than a 'bad difference' as long as
the difficulty of the Superhive topics doesn't increase so much that it becomes
really difficult to recover from an error.
Round 4 is the quickfire round, and deserves real praise
for a quickfire round that fits well into
the programme - too many producers recognise the appeal of a speedy ending
without thinking about this. In this round, single-answer questions from all
topics are asked with the answers all being hidden in the same hive - that means, as Bruce points out, one may see the
answer to a question before it's even been asked.
Here, more than ever in the show, the presence of the
Hive feels natural and additive: the
challenge of spotting words in the gird is affecting
the q&a, rather than just complimenting it - sometimes you can notice an
answer ages before the teams do,
sometimes having spotted something will allow a player to make an incredibly
early interruption.
So, Hive Minds. We have to present an overall opinion on
Hive Minds with a few different perspectives: Is Hive Minds better than its
sister Only Connect? No. Does it need to be, to be successful? Almost certainly
not, and indeed, Only Connect has the massive advantage of many years of
refinement. Can Hive Minds fit comfortably alongside Only Connect, perhaps, as
comrade and not-quite-so-equal equal? Yes, and we think the scheduler's decision
to have both shows start series simultaneously this year suggests that that is
the intent: if you want to, watch both - if you don't, watch OC. That's fine.
Would Hive minds prefer to be assessed without falling
into its older sibling's shadow, or, in other words, does Hive Minds stand
soundly on its own? This author has a couple of concerns on that frontier:
first is the overwhelmingly noticeable similarity to the connecting programme,
which implies a lack of confidence in this area, and second is that really, really grating graphics package.
That's Hive Minds then. Like it (we do), or loathe it
(you might), it's difficult to love it.