Chase 1000

Decades are defined by their rivalries. The eighties? Duran Duran vs Spandau Ballet. 90s? Neighbours vs Home and Away. 2000s? Bush vs Gore. And in the 2010s the only rivalry worth talking about is Pointless vs The Chase. The latter of which reaches its 1000 episode milestone with a special episode today at 5pm. Congratulations!

So we thought it would be fun to dig out our thoughts on the very first episode. Let’s go back in time to the 29th June 2009 and see what we wrote. Unfortunately the old commenting system doesn’t exist any more so we’ll never know who got it right and who has had their blushes spared. Stool Pigeon was an anonymous tip-off box which we basically stopped doing because the quality of tip-offs was usually so poor:

Breaking Stool Pigeon news: “A Bothers Bar regular is a contestant on The Fuse, and they are quite confident it’s better than The Chase.”

Let’s be warned though, every time I’ve read a a write-up of any new show by someone who’s been a contestant, they never fail to point out that they “think it’s a brilliant format,” so we’ll wait and see.

Right, I’m writing this blind of other people’s comments.

• A team of four people who attempt to win as a team but will lose as individuals go up against The Chaser in a general knowledge quiz. Bradley Walsh hosts.
• One by one each indivudual attempts to put money in the team bank. Their round begins with one minute of quickfire questions, each one worth £1,000.
• When the minute’s up, The Chaser comes on and walks to his seat at the top of the board (this is a fabulously irritating shot we see no less than five times throughout the episode. Couldn’t The Chaser just be in his seat all the time?). Today it’s Mark Labbett of The People’s Quiz fame, Shaun Wallace of Are You An Egghead? fame is also promised. Mark will give a disdainful comment in quite an unconvincing manner, although I suppose acting ability isn’t the producer’s primary concern. He’s much more convincing congratulating people.
• The board has eight steps on it like a ladder. The Chaser starts up the top (effectively on rung nine). The money the player has earned lies on rung six. If the player wants, they can start a rung beneath, and The Chaser will offer a fairly derisory sum. However, if the player is feeling particularly brave, The Chaser will offer a decent five figure sum if they fancy starting on rung seven.
• Starting points decided, it’s now a race down the ladder. Three-choice multiple choice questions are asked and contestants and Chaser lock their answers in, starting a five second clock once one of them does so. If the player is correct, they move down a rung. If the Chaser is correct, they move down a rung. This continues until the player gets the money down to the bottom where it goes into the team’s bank, or the Chaser catches up with them, in which case they’re out of the game and leave with nothing.
• Because making it to the end is quite important, the idea of the headstart offers is to become more derisory or compelling as the team goes on.
• Once all players have had their go, the players that remain in the game now race to the exit. They’re given a two step headstart on the Chaser, and are asked quickfire questions for two minutes against the clock. Each correct answer earns another step. The team play on the buzzers for this, which seeing as they’re playing as a team seems a bit odd, but I suppose it’s the quickest way to determine who wants to answer a question.
• Time up, and now the Chaser gets two minutes to catch up with them. Each correct answer brings him one step closer to the team, but if he gives a wrong answer the clock is stopped and the team can attempt to answer the question, being correct pushes the Chaser back a step.
• If the Chaser catches up with them within the two minutes then it’s no money but thanks for playing. If the team escape, they split the money equally between them.
• Right. On paper this sounded quite exciting, and quiz fans should be happy that there’s comparatively little messing around and chatter compared to similar tea time formats.
• However we think it’s missing something in the execution. The way we’d imagined it would be answering questions to progress up a money ladder (represented with actual steps with something like £500 on step one and £50,000 on step nine) with the contestant either opting to stop, possibly by hitting a big red button or something, or being forced to stop by getting a question wrong. At that point some exciting music starts playing and The Chaser literally comes after them by coming down the steps rather than a computer graphic. Is that a bit cheesy? Answer: probably. The current beds are remarkably low key. For a show called The Chase, it doesn’t seem to have a lot of life in it.
• The endgame is OK though. Maybe give the questions to each team member alternately? It IS weird buzzing in.
• This from a Stool Pigeon: “Contestants in The Chase were advised beforehand to “answer back”, if the Chaser dealt them some banter. This should make for some interesting exchanges…” Wonder how much is scripted.

Ah, memories. It’s fair to say Mark has grown into his Beast role considerably and clearly we misunderstood the endgame headstart mechanic on episode one. People still complain about buzzing in on the endgame although you wouldn’t have it any other way these days would you? Anyway it grew on us.

Let us never forget that in a parallel universe Austin Healy is one of ITV’s top light entertainers.

Of course no article on the history of The Chase would be complete without that Fanny Chmelar clip so here it is. In many ways this was the touchpaper that caused the show to explode. It has been followed since by several (fairly tedious) attempts to catch lightning in a bottle again, but it will never have the same impact (and in fairness it feels like they’ve calmed down on this front a little of late).

Viewed over six million times! Anyway congratulations to everybody involved.