Saturday 7 July 2012

The Chase - Gossip

I mentioned “The Chase” in my last post, which reminds me of an interesting tidbit of gossip I picked up from Mark ‘The Beast’ a couple of weeks ago. Mark has been working very hard on his American GK , because he has recently filmed a pilot for an American version of the series. So there’s every chance that The Chase will be expanding across the Atlantic. I mentioned that Mark had told me he’d filmed an American pilot to another quizzer, who shall be nameless , who replied that if Mark appears on television in the USA then at least it will show Americans that Bigfoot is alive and well and working in British television. Knowing Mark he’d probably be the first to laugh at that.

3 comments:

dxdtdemon said...

I'm wondering if the reason they're trying to get him some recognition in the American game show community is that some producer thinks that he would be a good replacement for Alex the Great when he retires in two years (if he makes it that long). Do you think that Mark has any great hosting potential/desire? Anyway, I hope that the American version of the Chase succeeds so that I can get on it at some point, hopefully before Mark learns the names of all of the quarterbacks the Bears have had over the past 27 years.

Londinius said...

Hi dxdtdemon
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing that you mean Alex Trebek. Do you really think they'd have a Brit hosting an American institution like Jeopardy ? (OK, I know Trebek is Canadian, but he's naturalised American now, so it's not the same. )As for Mark, yeah, I have no doubt he'd go for it if a chance arose. But I'm afraid that American Football is already a speciality of his - her probably knows the names of all the Chicago Bears quarterbacks for the last 27 years already.

dxdtdemon said...

I did in fact mean Alex Trebek. I think that Americans in general had no problem with Anne Robinson hosting The Weakest Link (American version), so I don't see why the new host of Jeopardy! has to be American. When Alex started hosting the current version of Jeopardy!, he was a Canadian journalist who had hosted a few Canadian game shows. It's not like there are many (if any) American celebrities associated with being intelligent who would be obvious choices, unless Ken Jennings wanted to do it. I'm hoping that Victoria Coren will end up doing it, but I doubt that that will happen.

I'm also quite peeved that the Chaser in the other pilot episode that didn't have Mark in it was Brad Rutter, and not Ken. Brad may have a slightly wider base of pop culture knowledge, but Ken far outclasses him on anything academic, especially the large amount of geography questions that typically populate televised quiz shows.