Since a few weeks I only think in connections. A bus stop, a talk show table, bare and North Holland? Fred Teeven! Sausage rolls, carnival, cheer suit and Brabant? Roy Donders! Chansons, pursed lips, joie de vivre and Halina Reijn? Matthijs van Nieuwkerk!
I suddenly see connections all around me, and that is mainly the fault of The Connection, a program that can go down in the books as the simplest, most complicated and most inimitable quiz in recent TV history. On paper, the format sounds deceptively simple, with three celebrities who have to answer all kinds of knowledge questions. But from all those answers, they must also discover an ingenious connection in every game round. To eventually arrive at a kind of ‘boss connection’ that reconnects all the answers from the entire program. As the quizmaster on duty sums it up: ‘It is that simple, and it is that difficult.’
Still, it’s all about The Connection actually not at all about the quiz itself, but mainly about the preconditions. Think of born quizmaster Matthijs van Nieuwkerk, who constantly says things like ‘Tap the answer’. Or think of the unprecedented decor: an enormous dome in which the answers are projected in space in a spectacular way. Not to mention the spectacular top prize: a unique digital work of art, which is described weekly by Van Nieuwkerk as a ‘non funsjebul tooken‘ (popularly known as an ‘NFT/enneftie’).
The Connection marks an important turning point in Van Nieuwkerk’s career, which has reached its most dynamic phase. In the dome he is finally completely freed from the talk show table, the chansons and Marc-Marie. Now and then the hand slips nonchalantly into the pocket, but otherwise Van Nieuwkerk does not stand still for a second. He is strict when necessary, and complimentary when candidates carry out his format properly. In between there are uncomfortable conversations (indispensable in a good quiz format), such as in Saturday’s episode with radio DJ Sander Hoogendoorn about woodlice:
Van Nieuwkerk: ‘Do you find them annoying?
Hoogendoorn: ‘I think it’s dirty.’
Van Nieuwkerk, with a stern look: ‘Because?’
“It doesn’t feel like it belongs in my yard.”
“But those bugs belong in your garden.”
‘Well okay.’
‘Well okay.’
After this exchange of words, Hoogendoorn suddenly turned out to have no chance.
In previous comments on The Connection it was stated that Matthijs van Nieuwkerk would not be on earth to present quizzes. Nonsense: Van Nieuwkerk is just right for the role of quizmaster. The program throws all its qualities in the blender, and blends them into the strangest Van Nieuwkerk smoothie you’ve ever drunk. But once you’ve had such a smoothie, you don’t want anything else, and you can only think in connections, connections and more connections. That dazzling Van Nieuwkerk has done it again nicely.