Saturday, 20 February 2010

QI, 7.13 - "Gothic" [Open Thread]

Saturday, 20 February 2010

Mistimed for Halloween, but well-timed as the thirteenth episode, QI continued its "G" series with a look at "Gothic". This was probably one of my favourite episodes in quite some time, not least because I'm saturnine enough to appreciate ghoulish trivia about gargoyles (they're actually water-spouts, the purely decorative ones are called "grotesques"), zombies (it would take about a month for one zombie to infect the entire world[*]), novelty coffins (a modern tradition in Ghana, apparently), etc. Plus, great comedy does tend to bubble up from the darker corners of the human experience. To that end, misanthrope Jack Dee and the cynicism of Jimmy Carr were employed well, and Sue Perkins proved (where Sandy Toksvig and Jo Brand have failed to this year) that, yes, women on panel shows can be funny! Spooky.

But what was your verdict?

19 FEBRUARY 2010: BBC1, 8.30PM

[*] Provided people don't fight back or hide from the increasing zombie hordes, one assumes...