Connect to boffins with help of Victoria

ONLY CONNECT (BBC2)

THERE comes a point when you have to acknowledge your limitations.

Your spaghetti bolognese might be loved by the family, but you’ve accepted it’ll never win a Michelin star.

And deep down you know you’ll never win a Scotland cap, even if Berti Vogts comes back.

There must be scores of people in the same dejected boat watching Only Connect.

Think you’re fairly clever? Well, you aren’t. You’re made to feel a blithering buffoon watching this ultra-smart BBC2 quiz show.

It’s about finding links between seemingly unconnected things, but it makes University Challenge look like one of those telly competition phone-ins where they ask what colour grass is.

If you can identify, for instance, the connection between a nuclear chain reaction and a Rubik cube is that they were invented by Hungarians then this is for you.

Even the category titles – hieroglyphs called things like Twisted Flax and Horned Viper – make you feel like you’ve wandered into a pub quiz at the Oxford Uni student union.

Somehow, though, Only Connect becomes an enjoyable half-hour’s telly.

Not only are you compelled to watch until you finally get an answer correct, it also has razor-sharp Victoria Coren Mitchell who, as host, never lets the boffin contestants take proceedings too seriously.

As far as I’m concerned you can forget ITV’s Victoria – BBC2’s Coren Mitchell is the real Queen of telly.

THE LIE DETECTIVE (C4)

WHAT a cringefest.

Couples ask each other deeply personal questions while expert Dan Ribacoff, armed with a polygraph, announces when someone’s telling porkies.

Unbearable to watch, but impossible to change the channel – and that’s the truth.