Hard Quiz
Wednesday, 8pm ABCTV
Would you actively volunteer to have the mickey taken out of you by comedian Tom Gleeson, all in the name of winning a brass cup?
Well obviously there are plenty of people who would, because Hard Quiz is now enjoying its second season on the ABC.
Season one aired quietly late last year and found a small but pretty loyal audience – and so here it is again back in Aunty’s Wednesday night comedy line-up.
This must be the only quiz to come out of a five-minute segment in another show and is inspired by Gleeson’s “Hard Chat” – probably the funniest thing on The Weekly with Charlie Pickering (you remember him – the guy that left The Project before it became a licence to print Logies?)
Hard Chat sees Gleeson pick on celebrities, while for Hard Quiz he turns his “talents” on the ordinary man on the street – and they pretty much not only seem to love it, but most give as good as they get.
Very similar in format to ABC’s Einstein Factor – Hard Quiz is not for the faint-hearted.
Four contestants – each with a specialist subject – face off against each other (with Gleeson throwing in barbs along the way). It’s fun, unpredictable and occasionally cringey.
Interestingly Gleeson actually auditioned for Family Feud – a job that went to the human Jack Russell that is Grant Denyer.
After watching Hard Quiz you realise that Feud might have been a very different program under the beautiful, acerbic wit of Mr Gleeson.
This isn’t rocket science (though one of the contestants did have NASA as his specialist subject) but it is a bit of fun on a Wednesday night.
– Tania Phillips
