8 thoughts on “The US The Chase pilots film today”
Lewis
A few notes, aside from the now-legendary recording length (about 7-8 hours total for 2 shows):
For those not checking with Buzzerblog, the chasers were Brad Rutter and Mark Labbett. I saw the recording with Mark. The cashbuilder round is 45 seconds now, with each correct answer earning $5,000.
Chaser offers can go very high, I saw as high as $250k (very much played up as “a quarter of a million dollars”) and hear that $265k was offered on the other recording. No offer below $10k was made, though all four cashbuilder rounds went pretty well. I doubt the Americans would take well to negative offers though. Everything else is exactly the same in terms of gameplay.
A strange thing I noticed is that Bradley plays more of an ownership role in the team: it’s MY team not THE team, it’s OUR money in the bank, etc. This leads to what I felt was a little more of an antagonistic relationship with the chaser.
I have no idea if this is just a recording thing, but on multiple choice the contestants’ answers were highlighted orange rather than blue, and the chaser’s answers were outlined in purple rather than red.
I do get the feeling Mark may have thrown a question or two, to let the contestants win big money so the pilot can look impressive. I don’t so much mind this on a pilot with nothing to really play for, since it will clearly help sell the show. Note that this is just a FEELING, I have no evidence on the matter.
The buzzer-name-reading-guy sounded very enthusiastic and very American. Rather like Ryan Seacrest.
There was only 1 extra commercial break that I noticed, between the team’s and the chaser’s run of the final chase. Bit of a weird place to put it, but whatev.
If, as stated above, Bradley Walsh seemed proprietary about the team and its chances/hopes of winning, that is only a slight exaggeration of what I have seen on UK episodes that appear on YT. Brad always appear to be on the side of the contestant, especially during the Chase rounds. It’s always “Let’s get in there!” and “If (s)he catches us, we’re out!” and “C’mon, get it wrong!”, and that sort of thing.
It all suggests that the banter, backchat and badinage between Bradley, the Chaser(s) and the Contestant(s) is being retained–which is a good thing, as this is one of the show’s many delights.
Oh yes, this is definitely true (and there was at least one or two “get it wrong”s in the recording). The difference isn’t huge, but for me the slight difference was noticeable.
We had that break, but there was also one between every contestant – apart from one which got shunted to before an answer reveal, which considering he was one away from locking in $200k with the Chaser one behind was absolutely fair enough. So five breaks in all. The one mid-final Chase makes sense given that there’s no breaks between shows in the US IIRC so squeezing one in right near the end seems only to be expected, especially to gain attention during the endgame.
Felt similarly about Brad, whose nickname was “The Brains” for this, though the adversarial nature of the game wasn’t so clear to me – the audience were encouraged to applaud him as he arrived each time, and to give him a standing ovation the first time. Seeing as I was probably one of only about twenty people in the entire audience who had heard of him, that was amusing.
Brad gave a $1k offer to a player who only managed three in the Cashbuilder.
Interestingly enough they filmed multiple alternative endings to the final chase, quite why I don’t know – if the idea was to show the many ways the game can end then the UK shows must be sufficient. (For a completely new show, I’d get it.)
David, were they using both the upper and lower sections of seating in Studio One?
If so, to get about 400 odd in, and only as you say, 20 people who knew who Bradley Walsh was, is pretty good work by the audience wranglers.
Does’nt surprise me that FOX wanted a more ‘hostile’ reaction to the Chaser. The good natured pantomine villian character that Mark et all play up to over this side of the atlantic wouldn’t cut it in Amercia. I expect if it makes the full series that they would ask the production team to ramp up the Good cop vs Bad cop dynamic even more.
Other way round – it was Brad Rutter they’d not heard of, I think the Americans mostly got into the evening taping – but yes, both sections of Studio 1 seating. I was on the left side of the upper tier, and relied on the HD feed to see the player podium, though I had a nice view of the board.
I suspect they played with different reactions to the Chaser in the two pilots – hostile to Mark, highly respectful of Brad – to see what test audiences over in the US made of each.
I watched both Chases and my only concern was the 45 second cash builder. The contestants were hand picked, very knowledgable and attacked the buzzer. Normal contestants would not have scored so highly and therefore would not have made such an exciting finale.
A few notes, aside from the now-legendary recording length (about 7-8 hours total for 2 shows):
For those not checking with Buzzerblog, the chasers were Brad Rutter and Mark Labbett. I saw the recording with Mark. The cashbuilder round is 45 seconds now, with each correct answer earning $5,000.
Chaser offers can go very high, I saw as high as $250k (very much played up as “a quarter of a million dollars”) and hear that $265k was offered on the other recording. No offer below $10k was made, though all four cashbuilder rounds went pretty well. I doubt the Americans would take well to negative offers though. Everything else is exactly the same in terms of gameplay.
A strange thing I noticed is that Bradley plays more of an ownership role in the team: it’s MY team not THE team, it’s OUR money in the bank, etc. This leads to what I felt was a little more of an antagonistic relationship with the chaser.
I have no idea if this is just a recording thing, but on multiple choice the contestants’ answers were highlighted orange rather than blue, and the chaser’s answers were outlined in purple rather than red.
I do get the feeling Mark may have thrown a question or two, to let the contestants win big money so the pilot can look impressive. I don’t so much mind this on a pilot with nothing to really play for, since it will clearly help sell the show. Note that this is just a FEELING, I have no evidence on the matter.
The buzzer-name-reading-guy sounded very enthusiastic and very American. Rather like Ryan Seacrest.
There was only 1 extra commercial break that I noticed, between the team’s and the chaser’s run of the final chase. Bit of a weird place to put it, but whatev.
If, as stated above, Bradley Walsh seemed proprietary about the team and its chances/hopes of winning, that is only a slight exaggeration of what I have seen on UK episodes that appear on YT. Brad always appear to be on the side of the contestant, especially during the Chase rounds. It’s always “Let’s get in there!” and “If (s)he catches us, we’re out!” and “C’mon, get it wrong!”, and that sort of thing.
It all suggests that the banter, backchat and badinage between Bradley, the Chaser(s) and the Contestant(s) is being retained–which is a good thing, as this is one of the show’s many delights.
Oh yes, this is definitely true (and there was at least one or two “get it wrong”s in the recording). The difference isn’t huge, but for me the slight difference was noticeable.
We had that break, but there was also one between every contestant – apart from one which got shunted to before an answer reveal, which considering he was one away from locking in $200k with the Chaser one behind was absolutely fair enough. So five breaks in all. The one mid-final Chase makes sense given that there’s no breaks between shows in the US IIRC so squeezing one in right near the end seems only to be expected, especially to gain attention during the endgame.
Felt similarly about Brad, whose nickname was “The Brains” for this, though the adversarial nature of the game wasn’t so clear to me – the audience were encouraged to applaud him as he arrived each time, and to give him a standing ovation the first time. Seeing as I was probably one of only about twenty people in the entire audience who had heard of him, that was amusing.
Brad gave a $1k offer to a player who only managed three in the Cashbuilder.
Interestingly enough they filmed multiple alternative endings to the final chase, quite why I don’t know – if the idea was to show the many ways the game can end then the UK shows must be sufficient. (For a completely new show, I’d get it.)
haha, we were told to give Mark a standing ovation when he first came on… then told “actually no, don’t”.
Also during the audience pickups, we were actually told to partially boo during one applause, one can only assume for a chaser walk-on.
David, were they using both the upper and lower sections of seating in Studio One?
If so, to get about 400 odd in, and only as you say, 20 people who knew who Bradley Walsh was, is pretty good work by the audience wranglers.
Does’nt surprise me that FOX wanted a more ‘hostile’ reaction to the Chaser. The good natured pantomine villian character that Mark et all play up to over this side of the atlantic wouldn’t cut it in Amercia. I expect if it makes the full series that they would ask the production team to ramp up the Good cop vs Bad cop dynamic even more.
Other way round – it was Brad Rutter they’d not heard of, I think the Americans mostly got into the evening taping – but yes, both sections of Studio 1 seating. I was on the left side of the upper tier, and relied on the HD feed to see the player podium, though I had a nice view of the board.
I suspect they played with different reactions to the Chaser in the two pilots – hostile to Mark, highly respectful of Brad – to see what test audiences over in the US made of each.
I watched both Chases and my only concern was the 45 second cash builder. The contestants were hand picked, very knowledgable and attacked the buzzer. Normal contestants would not have scored so highly and therefore would not have made such an exciting finale.