Letters and Numbers
Channel: SBS
Day & time: Weekdays, 6.00 p.m.
To watch full episodes of Letters and Numbers, CLICK HERE
Safety by the numbers for SBS game show
When I heard about Letters and Numbers, I thought it was a fresh premise for a game show. When I watched it, I realised that it was just the British show Countdown with a new name and Aussie hosts. The show originally hails from France where it was called Des chiffres et des lettres (numbers and letters). Clearly we love to be just that little bit different. This is evident in that it’s the same old formula put through a thesaurus.
The
show is hosted by television veteran Richard Morecroft, and sees two contestants
face off in a battle of word play and arithmetic skills. For the letters
game, players randomly choose consonants and vowels before having thirty
seconds to arrange them into the longest possible word. The person with
the longest word that can be found in the dictionary gets the length of
the word in points. Two rounds of this are followed by a round of the
numbers game, where a contestant randomly chooses three ‘big’
and three ‘small’ numbers. These digits must then be used
to get to a randomly generated numeral, with each only being used no more
than once. Simple enough, and unfortunately this could be seen as a negative.
You see, it fits in a half hour timeslot like a lot of other game shows. It’s nerdy, but without the flair of expertise seen in The Einstein Factor. There are no musical celebrities like in Rockwiz or Spicks and Specks. In fact, beyond the random letters and numbers each round, it’s essentially the same thing for twenty-five minutes. It feels like a show specifically aimed for an elderly viewership, and no doubt they love it for the cranial workout. It’s light viewing so you feel like you gave your brain a jog before watching trashy dramas. And therein lies the hook.
Naturally the audience is going to want to work out the best words or number combinations for themselves. This gets viewers involved. But there’s also a bit of personality in all three of the shows hosts, which makes involvement more personal. The official wordsmith, David Astle, seems a little arrogant, or at least overeager to share his bountiful knowledge, but he adds drops of wisdom that genuinely interest you. Then there’s the mathematics whizz, Lily Serna. She also puts up the letters and number the contestants desire, but her true talent is with solving the numbers games. The way she deciphers the problems is astonishing, and coupled with her looks, well, it makes involvement compelling. But let’s not forget Morecroft—he’s a gentle host, and delivers an endless stream of witty puns about numeracy and literacy (well done to the writers, I don’t know how they do it).
Letters and Numbers has been running for a month now, and has already seen a fair few stunning performances by contestants. It’s a safe show, with an easy set-up, but with the appropriate hosts and the accessibility for the audience, it’s smart viewing for a 6pm timeslot.
Thomas Wilson