New Show - The 1 Percent Club

Saturday evening saw the debut of ITV’s new quiz show, “The 1 Percent Club”. In the interests of the blog, I watched the show on the ITV player this morning. I’ll be honest, it didn’t take me long to come to a couple of conclusions. Before a question was asked, we saw host Lee Mack encouraging one of the 100 contestants to tell us that she thought she was a good singer, but everyone else didn’t, then to sing to prove it. I’ll be honest, that’s the sort of thing which really brings out my misanthropic qualities. – Not going to like this – thought I.Then as the mechanics of the show became apparent, I realised that we were only going to get 15 questions in a whole 45 minute show. Definitely not going to like this – thought I.

This might be an appropriate moment to look at the mechanics of the game. 100 people face a range of questions that have been asked to a large number of people throughout the country. The first question will have been answered correctly by 90% of the people asked, the second 80, the third 70 and so on. After the 50% question, it goes down in fives rather than tens. At some point the players remaining were given one pass, worth £1000, and if they hadn’t used it by a certain point they could leave the show, taking the £1000 with them. Okay. So, when you get a question wrong, then you’re out, unless you play your pass. For every player who is out, £1000 is added to the prize pot. If you manage to last until the 5% question and you get it right, hey, congratulations. However many of you get through can choose to take an equal share of £10,000.If by any chance you’ve got this far without using your pass, then that £1000 goes into your back pocket whatever happens. However you can ignore the £10,000 and attempt the 1 question. If you do, and you get it right, you share whatever is in the prize pot, which is going to be close to 100 grand. Get that wrong though, and it’s all over and you leave with nowt – unless you’ve got the 1 grand for not using your pass.

That’s the mechanics. And maybe if you haven’t seen the show you’ll be thinking, OK, I’ve heard worse. But what that summary of the mechanics doesn’t do is show you the importance of Lee Mack to the show. And make no bones about it, he is very important. I’m not going to make nasty or sarcastic comments about him as a performer. Lee Mack is a highly experienced and successful comedian, and a proven panel game performer. I dare say how much you’ll enjoy the show depends heavily on how much you like Lee Mack. Mind you, I like Lee Mack, but I can’t say that I particularly liked this show.

Why not? Well, I’ve already mentioned its glacial slowness as a quiz. 15 questions in a 45 minute show works out at one question every three minutes. Which might leave you to ask, what the hell does it do for the rest of the time? Well, Lee Mack interacts with the contestants and, er, that’s about it. Now, as I said, I’m not going to criticise Lee Mack – he does his bit very well. It’s easy enough to take the pee out of someone who has just given a wrong answer and humiliate them, and not so easy to extract some humour from the situation without ridiculing and belittling them – and Lee Mack manages to do this, fair play. But at the end of the day, I’m just not interested in this. I’m sorry, but I just don’t care about any of the contestants’ lives off of my screen. I’m not that bothered about them on the screen either, at least, not until the last question anyway.

What about the questions, then? Well, they’re not straight general knowledge, but each requires some logic and some working out. Now, I noticed that the QuizQuizQuiz organisation are involved in setting the questions, and they certainly have a great quiz background and know what they’re doing. But the format of the show means, I’m afraid, that many of the questions, until you really get into the business end, seem blindingly obvious. Which kind of puts this show into a genre I like to think of as ‘Ooh, aren’t you thick?!” This is most noticeable in the earlier rounds, where we saw the spotlight focus on the poor lady who failed to pick out a photograph of a polar bear by a palm tree as the odd one out. I’ve no doubt that she is a perfectly normal person of at least average intelligence, but when you’re taking part in a telly quiz it can do strange things to you.

As I said, I know that QuizQuizQuiz are a very reputable organisation, so if the show says that these questions have been asked to a significant number of people, and this percentage got them right, while that percentage got them wrong, then it’s true. But I have to say that even after 27 years as a question master in the club, and 35 years of teaching, I still found it surprising just how many people seemed to struggle on some of these questions. Case in point. The 1 question, the ‘answer this and you get a share in over 90 grand’ question was this. Which two letters come next in this sequence T N E C R E P E ? Bear in mind the name of the show. Maybe you’d be as surprised as I was when I tell you that only one of three contestants, each of whom had turned down a share in £10,000, got it right. OK, adrenaline and greed are a potent mixture – I threw away £32,000 on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire once because of it – and they make you do strange things. But when you get right down to it, there’s an awful lot of stuff I had to sit through to get to the point in the show where this happened.

A show based on working logically to work out answers to puzzle questions is not intrinsically a bad idea. Theoretically it might be possible to make a quiz game based on this type of questioning which could work well for a wide raging audience at prime time. In my opinion, and by all means feel free to disagree, “The 1 Percent Club’ isn’t it. Which is a bit of a shame, since there is the germ of a halfway decent quiz game here. If you cut out much of the chat and the faffing about it might make a quite diverting daytime show. Of course this is not feasible bearing in mind that you have 100 contestants to deal with. Which is why you put it on prime time, and give it a big name host to justify the time slot, throw it at the wall and hope that most of it sticks. And maybe you will find that works for you. For me, not so much.