Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Calling the tune
GARETH MALONE’S ALL STAR MUSIC QUIZ
BBC2, 7pm
BRITAIN’S coolest choirmaster, complete with funky new haircut, leads this one-off special music quiz to celebrate the BBC’S Music Day.
Gareth Malone hosts the series of entertainment rounds, which sees two teams, or supergroups as he rather generously calls them, compete in musical rounds. “We don’t say the answers, we play the answers,” he says.
And so begins our own little game, called “I never knew they could play that.” The teams include actor John Thomson, playing the drums, politician turned presenter Ed Balls on piano, comedian Pippa Evans on acoustic guitar and comedian Rob Rouse on electric guitar and trumpet.
Perhaps less surprising, there’s also MOBO award-winning saxophonist Yolanda Brown and ex JLS star JB Gill on keyboard.
Across all genres, from pop to rock and reggae to rap, the teams have to battle their music skills and knowledge. There’s a round that sees one team look at an envelope containing the name of the song (pretending it’s the first time they’ve seen it). They then have to play the first four notes of the song while the other team needs to guess the track.
Later, there’s a round that sees them try to identify songs played backwards. And there’s a “guess the song from the drum fill” round, just to give John Thomson something to do.
It’s essentially an extremely polite version of Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
No swearing, no mocking, just gentle applause and fairly easy questions.
But it’s all good fun.