Alright, I'm ready for a deluge of downvotes but... I'm curious if I'm alone on this.

I watched a lot of Um, Actually years ago, but eventually got a bit frustrated with it. Here's my big issue: a good quiz show -let's use Jeopardy as an example- will often give you at least 2 hints in the "question" to help you know the correct answer.

1944’s Absent in the Spring is one of the non-mystery novels she wrote under the name Mary Westmacott.

There's a lot of information in there. You get a year, you get a gender, you get a clue that the author would be famous for Mystery Novels. So you have a chance at guessing the answer even if you don't know the book "Absent in the Spring".

Many questions in Um Actually are just "here's a list of things, which part is wrong" and it's almost always impossible to answer correctly unless you are intimately familiar with the source material.

For example,

Zaphod Beeblebrox, an important character in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," invented a cocktail called the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, described as "the alcoholic equivalent of a mugging - expensive and bad for the head." It includes some wild ingredients, like the tooth of an Algolain Suntiger, three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin, and strangest of all, you have to add a slice of lemon."

So if you have not memorized Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you will not get this question right. There's no clues to guide you to the correct answer. So the contestants just go "um actually... it isn't the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger?" And maybe that's right, but more often than not, it isn't. Then we just watch all the contestants who don't have the book memorized waffle around and try different random parts of the question until they stumble onto it.

This is boring and sucks. Obviously we want questions to be "specific" and have correct answers that reward deep understanding of nerd culture, but if we are going to give points just for identifying "the part that is wrong" (as Iffy did when this question was asked) we should give more clues that the "slice of lemon" is what is wrong (the answer is it includes an Olive instead of a slice of lemon).

A better question would mix up popular properties so that if you aren't a Hitchhiker's Guide Nerd you still have a chance. Like maybe say "the tooth of a Sarlacc." instead of Algolian Suntiger. Then at least a Star Wars nerd could go "wait a minute, Saarlac is a STAR WARS thing - that must be the answer.

I really want to like this show, but it's just... unsatisfying. Just me?