The Most Enlightening Show You're Not Watching

I've spoken before about my love for TV Tropes on this blog. It is The Abyss in every sense of the word...you gaze into it, and are lost for all of time. Seriously...hit "Random" once on that site and you're hooked.

But one of the more maddening tropes, that infects modern day Hollywood and media in general, is that Viewers Are Morons. It's a commonly held perception in Hollywood that one can never underestimate the intelligence of viewers, and certainly there's support for it if you look at the grosses of Michael Bay movies.

The top-grossing being, "Who Wants To Set Back Civil Rights 20 Years?"

Unfortunately, the idea that Viewers Are Morons is particularly prevalent in American media. And don't bloody pretend it isn't...I've read far to much IMDB trivia about the making of the movie, where executives went, "its a good movie, but what about TITS?" There are exceptions, but unfortunately, the higher-ups in entertainment tend to play the odds.

And that leads me to the point: there's a British panel show called QI, for Quite Interesting. And it's the rare combination of gut-bustingly hilarious and utterly erudite, overseen by Stephen Fry, the patron saint of graceful intellectualism. Unfortunately, it is not being played on BBC America or over in America, because (according to BBC America's chief Garth Ancier, Americans "'won't get it'". 

Personally, I think its a load of horseshit, and it smacks of condescension. If Jeopardy can survive over here, then surely a show as funny and entertaining as QI can thrive. On the surface, you'd think it'd be typically stuffy British fare: a panel of four comedians or celebrities answer trivia questions. Each Series (that's the word the Brits use for "Season") has a letter theme: A, B, C, D, Etcetera. And each episode in the letter-themed series is a topic: the recently completed Series H had "Horses and Hunting", "Highs and Lows", "House and Home", etc. 

The thing that sets it apart is that it doesn't focus on the answers, but rather how its panelists answer them. Points are given not only for right answers but for creative ones. And considering how obscure and counter-intuitive the questions are, creative ones are pretty much all we get. It's an excellent mix of genuinely challenging and thought-provoking trivia and a bunch of comedians goofing off and having fun. I recommend checking out some of the highlights below, and if you feel particularly incensed over what you're missing out, write you're cable provider and tell them you want to see it! Hey, it worked for Star Trek.