The Chase
The Chase, ITV’s teatime quiz show, is universally loved, and yet Getintothis’ professional misery-guts Steven Doherty has still managed to find a few faults with it.
Now, straight from the off, let it be known that I’m a big fan of The Chase.
It’s the shining light and pinnacle of ITV’s current “3 hours of Gameshows with affable hosts” section of programming every weekday afternoon, following as it does Tenable and Tipping Point.
And in these trying times it is currently a massive boon to those of us both working at home and trying to keep our quiz brains active.
In fact it is (a very close) second only to the behemoth that is Pointless for essential viewing for us wannabe intellectuals.
And it seems it also has it’s fans in the Liverpool music community, with two of the most recent 13 Questions interviews we have done both namedropping that part of The Chase where a contestant takes the lower offer as the answer to our question “When did you last shout at the TV?”
And it seems they’re not the only ones.
I’m fucking furious about the Chase today! I fucking hate when people take the low offer….
She’s a thief!
— Danny O’Neill (@Dan86_DJ) April 20, 2020
Admittedly, it is beyond tiresome when someone does that.
Imagine going to all the trouble of applying to go on the show, the travelling to the studios, spending all day there, before going on TV to take money off your fellow team-mates by being thick.
Anyway, like any show with something of a set format, certain traits appear and some of these are even more frustrating than the above.
The below annoyances may seem rather trivial, but once you notice them when watching it five times a week, even on a national institution such as this, then they soon start to grate.
1. When the host, Bradley Walsh, asks the contestant, “If you WAS to win some money today, what would you do with it?”
Now, I’m a great admirer of Bradley Walsh.
He’s naturally funny and seems that he would be the sort of person who you could go for a pint with, and his reaction on the above video cracks me up every time.
But his ‘I’m a lovable Cockney’ schtick comes into view when he is talking to the contestant before they start their round, with him mangling the Queen’s English with the above sentence four times every evening.
It’s were, Brad, WERE.
You won’t even have noticed him doing it, and now you’ll not be able to un-hear it.
And it seems it’s not just me that’s noticed his vocal tics.
the worst thing about this lockdown is how much I hate how Bradley Walsh says ‘correct’ on the chase
— Josh (@Joshisbrilliant) March 28, 2020
2. The “banter” between the Chaser and the contestant when they first meet.
Don’t get me started on this.
I would love to know whether any of that is rehearsed in any way before filming, because surely it is far too awful to not be staged.
It’s the bit when the Chaser first comes out and sits down and it inevitably proceeds like this:
Chaser: “Welcome Sue, so you’re a taxi driver, well I think that you’ll be the first cab off the rank tonight…..the first one going home anyway” (or some such ‘going home’ reference that never quite works).
Contestant: (and it’s whatever they say next first that is the cringiest of all)…”Yeah, well, no I won’t, we’ll see, you’ll be the one going home, I’ll show you.” (or some such sentence that makes the toes curl every time).
It’s awful and they should cease it immediately.
Exhibit A, your honour.
3. The Chasers’ nicknames.
The Beast: Yep, perfectly fine.
The Governess: No problem at all with that.
The Vixen: No idea, makes no sense whatsoever. Is she meant to be “foxy”? Bleakly sexist.
The Sinnerman: Nope, doesn’t work on any level.
For a start, his surname is pronounced Sin-ha not Sinna.
Is it some kind of play on Cinnamon? That doesn’t make sense either, what’s cinnamon got to do with anything?
Worst of all, of course, is The Dark Destroyer. In 2020. On mainstream television.
Or as Paul Sinha himself says in his stand-up routine, “The Dark Destroyer, proof that low-level racism is still allowed on ITV.”
The show has just announced that they are to introduce a 6th Chaser shortly, an Irishman with curly hair, Lord only knows what they’ll come up with for him.
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4. When the contestants have to choose their set of questions for the Final Chase.
“So, during the break we asked the team to choose which set of questions they would like for the Final Chase, Set A or Set B, and the team chose………?”
Why do they have to choose? There’s no difference between the questions, there’s no actual sets of questions.
So, it doesn’t mean anything, there’s no advantage or disadvantage.
Why are they even mentioned? It’s just nonsensical.
5. Pushbacks. Bloody Pushbacks.
No, not a U2 single, but the final mantra of the show, every night WITHOUT FAIL.
Whether team get 8 or 28 in the final round, either Bradley or the team will instantly say “Ooooooh, we’re going to need some pushbacks, ooooh, you’re going to need some pushbacks, it’s all about the pushbacks.”
No, it isn’t.
It’s probably about 1 in every 20 episodes where the pushbacks make any sort of difference to who ends up winning the actual quiz, so it is clearly not all about the pushbacks.
Two that are certain in life: death and Bradley Walsh saying “were gonna need some pushbacks” on every single fucking chase episode
— Ben Salisbury (@BenSalisburyEFC) April 5, 2020
I do love it really.
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