Weaver's Week 2026-04-12

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The BBC has a problem; a delicious, welcome, happy problem. The Traitors is such a huge success that it makes a lot of stars out of a lot of ordinary people. Many of them are happy to return to their normal lives, and that's absolutely fine and we totally respect their decision.

Once some people have had a taste of stardom, they look for a little more. Take Harry, the winner from series 2; he's found a new focus for his faith, and went off to Rome to make a documentary and meet the Pope.

Paul, a less successful but equally memorable contender from the same series, has also been on our telly lately.

Vernon Kay is the main host for this programme. Vernon is a familiar face; this is his (counts up) (runs out of fingers) (runs out of toes) twenty-first main hosting role. Some of these shows have been excellent, some of them have been canned after one series, all were made a little bit better by one of the most reliable hosts on the box.

The format is quite simple. Paul Gorton, him off The Traitors who isn't Harry, has been to various places around the country. He's filmed little snippets, one-minute vignette films. Each is a small story in itself: demonstrating how "leggers" powered boats on the canals around Dudley, or the giant water wheel near Falkirk. If they'd wanted to make a travelogue programme about Paul's progress, it would be a perfectly viable show; not flashy, not stylish, but he'd make a grand job of it.

However, Paul isn't just here to show off his tourist spots. He's here to ask a question. "Would you believe that they filmed children's classic series The Box of Delights in this here grotto? Well, would you?"

And that brings us back to the studio, where Vernon has a few people round. Does our honoured guest believe that they filmed some of The Box of Delights in Dudley's canals? Our guest explains their reasoning, and eventually plumps for believing it, or not. A point is awarded if they get the right choice.

And, in a nutshell, that's Do You Know Your Place? Paul visits places and asks questions about the place, and people in the studio say whether they believe him or not. To mix up the programme a little, Paul also asks questions with (gasp!) three possible answers. None of these questions are offered around, just to the assigned player. Honestly, it's as if they didn't want to award many points.

But the show isn't just filmed reports from Paul leading to a question. There's a studio bit in the middle – is this food a particular local delicacy? Can you recognise the song being performed by a local talent on an instrument from the region? What do you understand of the local dialect? All of these, and more, are played for more points.

Indeed, the show began with a challenge to locate the place on a map, with the closest player getting a point. And each episode finishes with a "missing letters" round, completing words about today's place from which some letters have fallen off.

Do You Know Your Place? went out at 6.30, immediately after House of Games (3). The comparison does it no favours; opening with a "Where is Kentish Town?" round, closing with "Smashed Answers", and much of the bit in the middle being like "Hey, Alexander!".

Further comparisons to the Osman—Sheen behemoth stem from the way all the contestants are with us for the entire week, and how points are awarded to a weekly leaderboard. The prizes are naff, too: a Postcard from Paul and a souvenir geegaw each day, and a branded fleece to the weekly winner. It's hardly the wheely luggage.

However, it would be unfair to dismiss Do You Know Your Place? just because it is a bit similar to the show before it. We think it's rather like the old Holiday '85 and Wish You Were Here?, travel programmes put out in primetime to showcase holiday destinations. Paul's little films add up to about eight minutes, they show off some of the tourist attractions, and give a little insight into life in the town. While it's not the programme's main aim, we do end up wondering if we might take a day in Derry, a weekend in Whitby, or a fair fraction of a fortnight in Farnham.

And even if you're not enthused to visit, Do You Know Your Place? is a calm and gentle entertainment. It's not thrilling, nothing here is going to set the world alight. It's comfortable viewing, the competition is really a scaffold from which to hang a genteel conversation about a little bit of the country.

By design, Do You Know Your Place? visits all parts of the country. Each week has a stop in Scotland, somewhere in Wales, a place in Northern Ireland, and two visits to England. It's filmed in Belfast by Stellify Media. The panels tend to reflect geographic and cultural diversity – there's usually someone familiar to grandparents, and someone who the youngsters might recognise. Any panel that can feature both Anneka Rice and Remi from Radio 1xtra is doing well. (That said, any week when there's just a single woman on the panel is going to feel more blokey than we'd like.)

This column watched almost every episode of Do You Know Your Place?, and we only do that for shows we enjoy. True, we didn't watch many of them very hard, and we couldn't tell you what happened in most of them (other than Kate Bottley winning everything), but we had fun.

Now, who do we talk to about Rachel's Super Spy School..?

Well, this week's review came up rather short, so let's take a quick look through the archives for other shows about travel and going places.

Jedward's Big Adventure featured another pair of entertainers who kept their future career options open. This show went out on CBBC in 2012 and 2014, and featured the singing irregulars leading small parties of tourists around major attractions. Yes, you too could be guided round the Tower of London by John or Edward, and they'll tell you all they know.

Because John and Edward have to learn facts to tell their parties, they first get a guided tour of the place. Very sneakily, the CBBC audience is educated – along with the pop stars – about the attraction's history and origin. Unlike Do You Know Your Place?, Jedward never intended to mislead their audience, it just happened sometimes.

Monte Carlo or Bust was a three week wonder on the ITV network in 2010. Three pairs of celebrities went from London to Monte Carlo, with the task of learning as much as they possibly could about French cuisine, culture, architecture, morality, and probably how to ride a bicycle while wearing a stripey shirt with a string of onions around your neck.

At checkpoints, each team was judged on what they have learned about the areas they have passed through. Once all the teams have arrived in Monte Carlo, the team judged to have learned the most were declared the winners. Stood and fell on the strength of its teams – Jack Dee and Adrian Edmondson were less funny than we hoped, Penny Smith and Rory McGrath were the class swots, Jodie Kidd and Julian Clary the actual comedy relief.

Holiday '77 got its own spin-off series, Holiday Quiz over Christmas 1988; we don't believe Wish You Were Here? ever had a quiz of its own. Passport Quiz was a Scottish show loosely themed on travel – rounds included "Name that place" and "What's the price of this break?" Oddly, no round about finding a spot on the map.

National Geographic Geo-Genius went out on the National Geographic channel in 2001. Quite a clever idea: the group progressed around the world on a pre-determined route, answering quiz questions to progress, and the worst performers dropped out from time to time. The finalists then went head-to-head, and whoever gave the first answer remained in control until they got one wrong, then their opponent could take a streak of their own. Probably about one idea short of brilliant, but perfectly serviceable, and far better than anything the channel's put out in the past decade.

And no whip-round of travel quizzes would be complete without The Travel Quiz, hastily thrust into the BBC1 daytime schedules in 1993 after Eldorado turned out to be made of tin. Andi Peters hosted, and we found it to be interminably dull, slow and sluggish, and with a naff prize.

If it's ever remembered, The Travel Quiz is for the out-take, following a clip of the music video. "Oh, they faded it out before it goes... Barcelooona! Okay, blue team, your question – what city was that?"

"Two sorts of bear are found in Yellowstone National Park; the brown or grizzly bear, and which other?" The boo-boo bear?

Starting with Mastermind, where Paul Richardson came unstuck taking questions on men's football, finishing on 16. Yellowstone was Paul Smith's subject, and he concluded with 18 correct answers. The "pirate queen" Grace O'Malley was taken by David Ford, whose general knowledge round started strongly, staggered around a bit in the middle, and finished with 19 points and a pass – felt like the contender had left a stronger challenge on the table, and certainly didn't scale the heights of his round in the heats.

Milena Malcharek scored very well on The Silmarilion, missing just one question. The general knowledge round contained so many very plausible answers – but also very wrong answers, little points that are lost in translation from Milena's first language (we suspect Polish, but it doesn't much matter). Ultimately, the round turned on Milena saying "ammonium", the question requiring "ammonia", and the difference in the English language is one extra hydrogen atom. One point – and one atom – is the margin between victory and defeat.

So David Ford, a civil servant, books a place in the final, representing the Northern Irish contingent.

University Challenge pitched Edinburgh against Darwin Cambridge. Just before the final starter, both sides had identical records: 20 correct answers from 48 questions, including 12 of 24 bonuses. But Edinburgh had a 25-point lead, because they had had just one penalty for an incorrect interruption, while Darwin were wrong on six guesses. Sadly, six penalties is a record for this series (the average is just under two per team), and we don't recall a higher penalty figure in a series we've watched in detail.

Perhaps it was a sign when Darwin got the first set of bonuses, on the topic of politicians declaiming "In the name of god, go!". The Cambridge side were later perfect on a fiendishly difficult bonus set on two names differing by a double letter, and a spectacular buzz on the origin of the word "version".

Edinburgh got the final starter, and notched up a 155-110 win. They finished 23/51 overall, 14/27 on bonuses, both stats slightly below the series average. Rayhana Amjad recalled their buzzer form of the first round, with six starters, most notably on definitions of "superstructure". Just the one bonus full house, on citrus fruits, but Edinburgh got something out of almost every set. The side remains tenacious, one can never count them out even against flashier opposition. We meet them one last time in the final, set for 20 April.

Holger, the winner from Game of Wool, has been working on a new show for our screens. "Froglets" are a bunch of little knitted frog puppets, and star in a show on Cbeebies next month. We don't think they're the same creatures who live on the moon and support the Soup Dragon.

Coming up this week, Your Song (C4, Sun), which is basically The Piano with fewer instruments and more vocals; bring your own hankies. The News Quiz starts series 120 (Radio 4, Fri). And good luck to Guz Khan, who will be appearing at the very same time on Blankety Blank (BBC1) and Stephen Mulhern's Celebrity Catchphrase (ITV) next Saturday.

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