Show + tell: Paul Flynn’s top telly

Paxman put-downs, brainbox answers and nerdy normcore fashion – U Chall returns!

IN APRIL, THE 46th trophy of University Challenge was handed over to Levin, Mckeown, Devine-stoneman (of course the double-barrelled one was captain) and Hazell from St John’s College, Cambridge. Yet here we are again, lined up for another bout of what is undoubtedly the least televisual television programme and, strangely, beguilingly, like some bewitching ancient potion, still one of the best.

University Challenge should be anathema to TV programming in 2018. What with their astronomical tuition fees, flagrant lack of diversity and generationally noplatforming brouhaha, the intellectual arm wrestle feels cut directly against the national grain. But there’s still something uniquely magnetic about whipping back the curtains of Oxbridge’s Oz to reveal these curious Wizards. When St John’s lifted their trophy, a man barely into his twenties was sporting a taupe roll neck. This is the educated classes’ taste, laid bare. On a purely visual level, U Chall is at least as intoxicating as Love Island.

Part of the longevity of U Chall has been framed in its increasingly bizarre casting. The producers have started having fun with the contestants from which they must farm their stars. Essentially, it is just a game show that feels a bit like reality TV for the aspirant middle classes. It’s overseen by quizmaster general Jeremy Paxman, the BBC’S favourite stern, sexy father-figure, a sort of PHD Jeremy Kyle. The young undergraduates smarm for his attention and fear his castigation. If the upper echelons of young academia have spent their lives buried in books in fear of life, it is Paxman who most consolidates that fear, a trade-off he plays delightfully to camera like a virtuoso pantomime dame.

Last week’s rudimentary joust between Exeter and Warwick introduced new sartorial accents to the normcore craze. What treasures will unfold as students from across the land flex their intellectual muscle in this cerebral boxing ring?

With the rise of the reality genre over the last 20 years, there’s been a lot of criticism of the young working classes wanting to get their faces on the telly at any cost. U Chall proves that when the fame bug bites, it bites indiscriminately. Over the next three months, I’ll learn to love this shower of odd brainboxes, their Wikipedia minds and pluralist wardrobes quite as if they were my own. Monday, 8.30pm, BBC One