Why does BBC4's Book Quiz have none of the right stuff?

The television book quiz seems designed for, and by, people who don't read books. Let's hope they don't bring it back

It shouldn't be too hard to get a TV quiz show right. Play it for laughs, along the lines of Have I Got News For You, intellectual satisfaction, like University Challenge, or simply cold hard cash, but make it gripping, entertaining and surprising. But as BBC4's latest series of The Book Quiz draws to an unexciting close, it's hard to think of a more misconceived programme.

It was surprising to see a second series commissioned after the first series, hosted by David Baddiel, was deservedly panned. Perhaps the feeling was that the redoubtable Kirsty Wark could give it some backbone, but her presence is the first indication of the major problem with the show: it's a quiz about literature for people who aren't really very interested in reading.

Any specialised quiz should have guests and a host who at least appear to have some knowledge of what they're talking about. However, Wark, who wears the same expression of forced schoolmarmish joviality so familiar from Newsnight Review, seems to do little more than read the autocue and smile manically. This uncertainty extends down to the various guests, whose dubious links to the "literary" world rarely rise above the level of the magnificently useless Tim Yeo, whose appearance the other week stemmed from a possibly unfounded rumour that he may once have read a book.

The programme often seems to be nothing more than a succession of people miserably moaning "Nope, sorry, haven't a clue. Nope, none at all". It's a sad case when more entertainment comes from what the contestants don't know than the meagre scraps they do. Television perennials such as finalists David Aaronovitch (a long way from his famous appearance on University Challenge in 1975) and Giles Coren do raise the occasional laugh with their erudition, but the programme's humour, such as it is, comes more often from their thinly veiled contempt for the proceedings.

Perhaps it's impossible to do a literary quiz on TV at all. Discussing books isn't ever going to be "visual", despite tired picture rounds spelling out the names of various classic books. Even on BBC4, the supposedly highbrow channel, there's a glaring uncertainty of tone, with questions veering from "classic" literature to modern bestsellers without any apparent rhyme or reason. Certainly, compared to the brilliantly witty Radio 4 series The Write Stuff, the Book Quiz is a very poor thing indeed. The Write Stuff's team captains Sebastian Faulks and John Walsh are both substantial figures in the world of books, and their wide assortment of guests actually appear to know what they're talking about.

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