{"id":15002,"date":"2025-03-08T20:59:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T20:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/?p=15002"},"modified":"2025-03-08T20:59:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T20:59:25","slug":"show-discussion-chess-masters-the-endgame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/?p=15002","title":{"rendered":"Show Discussion: Chess Masters: The Endgame"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mondays, 8pm,
BBC2<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a big swing (they’ve put it in the Only Connect<\/strong> slot, BBC2’s highest rating slot of the week) and I’m here for it, but they’re already doing things that on paper seem more amateur than Grandmaster. I mean look at that subtitle! Is this the first or last series?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sue Perkins invites 12 players from across the nation to compete in this tournament of sorts involving chess puzzles, with the worst\/best (we don’t know the format yet) players competing in a speed chess game at the end with the loser getting eliminated (presumably). Also lots of chess games end in draws, so how are they going to model that here? In a move that feels like an absolutely crazy compromise, we’ll be getting the highlights of these speed chess games and you’ll be able to watch the games in full on iPlayer afterwards<\/a> although how many casuals are going to bother to do this knowing the result is certainly a question mark. Experts David Howell and Anthony Mathurin (who you may recognise from series one of The Traitors<\/strong>) are on hand to commentate and guide us through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On paper it really feels like they’re trying to cram in a lot in 28 minutes – if there’s a show that could fill a 60 minute slot without a great deal of extra expense this feels like it. I was always a bit rubbish at chess, but I used to enjoy the Short vs Kasperov series on Channel 4 about 30 years ago so it’s not like this can’t work. Watched it? Let us know what you think in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mondays, 8pm,BBC2 This is a big swing (they’ve put it in the Only Connect slot, BBC2’s highest rating slot of the week) and I’m here for it, but they’re already doing things that on paper seem more amateur than Grandmaster. I mean look at that subtitle! Is this the first or last series? Sue Perkins\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[803,187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","category-show-discussion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pLcmt-3TY","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}