On Friday night the run of debutant BBC2 series Genius came to a close. It’s certainly been a fun series that has had modest ratings (though I tend to think that anything over 1 million people on a Friday night is a positive) and enough potential for it to come back for a second series.
The premise, for those who haven’t seen it, is that each week four or five members of the public pitch ideas to a panel that consists of host Dave Gorman, a celebrity guest (who ultimately has the final say) and a studio audience. To assist or derail their pitch the idea is demonstrated in the form of a prop made by the production team. At the end of the episode, the celebrity guest then has to pick the best idea of the evening who then receives a trophy and a bouquet of flowers.
This program isn’t without flaws. There is a section halfway through that laughs at all the ideas too stupid to appear on TV and, whilst chucklesome at points, wasn’t necessarily as funny as it thought it was. However, in the final episode, it was modified and turned into a quickfire round where Gorman would fire ideas at Stewart Lee, the guest, and he’d have to declare it either genius or not genius. It made a nice change but I just think they would just dump the idea altogether.
Having said that, there was a lot to be enjoyed. In particular, some of the ideas were actually enough to make me think that they were either a mad genius or just a mad, raving lunatic in general. My favourites from the series were the maths lessons taught through the medium of interpretive dance, the conveyor duvet (that got crushed to smithereens when they Dave Gorman and Johnny Vegas completely ruined it), humans as piano notes and the absolutely disastrous pitch to have cat bars. Seriously, there was actually a person who thought that was an idea worth presenting on national television.
Perhaps more refreshing, it was nice to see Dave Gorman back on TV again. He’s an underrated TV personality who did amazing things in the past like Dave Gorman’s Important Astrology Experiment and American Unchained. This show plays very much to his strengths. The celebrity guests were also, for the most part, good sports. My favourites included Johnny Vegas and Stewart Lee but Jonathan Pryce was a bit of a damp squid.
In short, this was great, if not quite genius.
