Curious Creatures

A panel game about animals.

Kate Humble asks difficult questions of Chris Packham and Lucy Cooke. Joined by a second panellist, the teams engage with rounds including:

• Yay or Neigh - true-or-false questions.
• Is it Bigger than a Chicken? - a Twenty Questions-style round, where "yes" responses earn a small piece of a photo of today's animal. Slightly changed in series 2, where the teams in turn are given a photo piece and can then ask a yes/no question before guessing the animal.
• Who's the Daddy? - pictures of baby animals (series 1 only).
• Life on Earth - a video clip, followed by a question.
• Whose Poo? - deduce which animal left these droppings.
• Pecking Order - put three species in order.
• Two-Toed Sleuth - deduce which animal this object [like jaw or egg] came from (series 2 only).

Five rounds are played, and success in a round earns part of a "Curious Creature", an animal made up from bits of other animals. This final round is the only scored one (a team scores two points for identifying one of the pieces they won earlier, and one point for identifying any left over) and determines the day's winner.

Set in a bright studio, the teams sit in front of video screens like on QI. Curious Creatures has a calm and sensible atmosphere, teams share what they know like in Eggheads. This is good, as the show airs immediately after Eggheads. (Or for series 2, House of Games.) It's a very old-school sort of show, geared toward allowing panellists to show off what they know, rather than probing to reveal what they don't.

The squeal let out by Lucy Cooke after uncloching a large pile of elephant dung. Surely Kate's struggle to lift it was a clue…

BBC programme page

Weaver's Week review