Does Lois Cameron appreciate this episode's deviation from the normal pattern?
Can a modern take on Sherlock Holmes really work? Lois Cameron gives her verdict.
QI, the intellectual and more sensitive alternative to Mock the Week, is still going strong in its seventh series.
Since its launch in 2003, it has been promoted from BBC 2 to BBC 1, and five QI books have been released, with the first QI Annual published this year. Now they’ve got to the letter ‘G’ series, one wonders if they will actually get to the end of the alphabet – with two series a year, it should be wrapping up in 2019.
The line up for the first episode was impressive – Rob Brydon, David Mitchell, Dara O Briain and regular Alan Davies. Within minutes, Alan had already destructed a desk with a walking stick saw (whose idea was it to give Alan a saw?) before he was defeated by the plastic trees decorating the set. There were a lot of props this episode, with a “little hoe” walking stick, a glass tube to grow straight cucumbers and what was essentially a pepper mill used for sowing seeds.
QI gives its guests the chance to prove their smarts, and aside from the comedy they also occasionally come up with the right answers. This episode was informative as usual, discussing the economics of rehabilitating a dying bee, and providing you with useless facts with which to annoy your friends. For example, did you know that there are only five places in the US that have an apostrophe in their name? Bet you didn’t – now look them up.
With QI you get a history lesson, biology lesson and grammar lesson all rolled into one, with plenty of humour to make the schooling go down more easily. While these might not be facts essential to life, you never know when they will provide you with the answers in a pub quiz.
QI is on Thursdays at 9:30pm on BBC 1
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