Wednesday and Thursdays, 9pm,
ITV1
Blimey. It was August 2013 when we started banging on about Korean show The Genius, and it’s fair to suggest that we thought that first series was a bit of a mixed bag, but the hits *really* hit, and across its four seasons it really learned what worked and what didn’t (check out our commentaries in the Specials Board), and by the end we were declaring it “probably the best show in the world being made today”. So it’s thrilling that after a bit of a Dutch misfire, we’ve got our own version that’s hopefully learned some lessons, made by people who seemingly really love the original. Let’s be clear here, it probably isn’t commissioned without the success of The Traitors. But let’s also be clear here, this pre-dates The Traitors by the best part of a decade, and actually isn’t *that* much like it.
Genius Game sees a group of people playing as individuals but invariably having to strike and break coalitions across games of strategy and intelligences both social and logical. Winning games means earning Tokens of Life (i.e. immunity) which you normally get a couple of to give to someone else except the person who finishes bottom in each game who is automatically up for elimination, and who must challenge a player of their choosing to a Death Match to survive. Doing well in games also earns Garnets – the show’s currency. These represent power and can be traded with other people for favours or traded with the house for game advantages – but at the end of the series all the Garnets in play are converted into cash, £1,000 each, that the ultimate winner will receive.
The original Korean show is, undoubtably, extremely cool. It featured an incredible soundtrack (from electronic band Idiotape) as well as found music – the strings of Extreme Ways by Moby used excellently and famously to signify a “checkmate” moment. At its best its edited like a brilliant heist movie, flashbacks and flashforwards, plans coming together, plans falling apart, “how the fuck did that just happen?” moments, moments of interpersonal comedy and drama, moments of people finding out how to hack the game that leaves everyone open-mouthed – it’s cool, sexy people playing games hard.
The question is how much of that will have translated to our version – it remains an unusual format for a channel that doesn’t usually do unusual formats so this is a big swing. On the plus side they’re really going for it, pushing it largely, giving it a 75-minute slot to allow everything to breathe, a lovely set, David Tennant to draw people in – you absolutely cannot say they haven’t put the effort in (which makes putting it up against Race Across the World and Taskmaster a bit baffling – this is going to need word of mouth quickly). But have they managed to make it cool and sexy? Have they got the reveals right? That’s a question we can’t answer for now.
If you’ve watched it let us know what you think in the comments, however for episodic discussion check out #geniuschat in our Discord.
