Beat the Chasers
Contents |
Host
Co-hosts
Anne Hegerty, Mark Labbett, Jenny Ryan, Paul Sinha, Shaun Wallace (as The Chasers)
Broadcast
Potato (an ITV Studios company) for ITV, 27 April - 1 May 2020
Synopsis
An excursion into primetime for ITV's biggest quiz.
Our civilian contestant takes on an abbreviated "cashbuilder" round: each question's worth £1000, but they stop after they've got one wrong, or they've got five right. Get the first question wrong, and it's been a bit of a wasted journey.
But these are just the stakes. To win the money, the player will need to have to beat two or more Chasers in a head-to-heads contest.
Initially, the contestant is offered the money they earned from the cashbuilder, and can play against two Chasers. The Chasers will offer a certain head-start: the contestant always has 60 seconds, the Chasers might start at 50 seconds.
The choices come later: a third Chaser will offer more money, a different head-start, but it's an extra brain for the final. A fourth Chaser offers even more money, and the biggest reward comes from beating all five of 'em. Our player makes a decision, and the big-money chase is on.
In a nifty reversal of the usual format, while the solo contestant doesn't need a buzzer, the Chasers all need to ring in. Jenny Ryan told TV Times, "It's quite a learning curve. We thought it might be a bit easier than it actually was!"
Our player will answer questions while their clock ticks, and the clock will stop when they get a question right. Play then passes to the Chasers, whose clock will stop when they get a question right. The first team to run out of time loses.
Expect more than one game in each show.
Trivia
The first five episodes aired at 9 pm during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. ITV were so low on content at that point that they repeated the episodes soon after; the Friday episode was repeated just 2 hours 40 minutes later.
