New Daytime Quiz Show - The Tournament

Look, I wouldn’t want you to think I’m in the habit of sitting on my backside watching BBC daytime quiz shows on a Wednesday afternoon during term time. The fact is, though, that Covid hasn’t left me with a great deal of other options for the next few days.

That’s how I came to be watching The Tournament this afternoon. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know anything about it until it actually came on. So, what can we say. Well, it’s a daytime quiz show, so there’s no point judging it against my favourite quizzes like Mastermind, University Challenge and Only Connect. That’s not to do down daytime quizzes. There’s an awful lot of care and skill that needs to go into even bringing a daytime quiz show to the screen at all, let alone a show capable of entertaining its viewers, or at the very least sustaining audience interest for 45 minutes. If we think of the twin teatime behemoths of the genre, Pointless and The Chase, they’ve both sustained high audiences and become required viewing for large swathes of the population over more than a decade. How many other daytime/teatime shows have come and gone in that time? Haven’t counted, but I bet the number is larger than you think.

I’m not going to start with my first impressions of The Tournament, but rather with a look at its game mechanics. 8 contenders face a first round in which host Alex Scott asks 8 questions, with 4 multiple choice answers. Players cannot lock in their answer until all four answers have been read out. At the end of the round, the players are ranked according to the number of questions they answered correctly, and then how quickly they locked in their answers. Each player is then assigned a pot of money, with the number1 player getting most, and the number 8 player getting least.

The 8 players then take part in a set of 4 head to head matches. So player 1 gets to choose which player they take on, and also which category of questions they both answer. The incentive to take on a higher ranked player is that the winners adds the loser’s money to their own. The incentive to take the lower player on is that if you win in under the 2 minute time limit, then you get a large cash bonus. Game play is basically a buzzer quiz. Both contenders face each other on a light bridge made of steps, not a million miles away from the sort of thing you see on The Chase. Buzz in and get the question right and you take away an opponent's step and add one to your own – until you’re full anyway. Once you’ve knocked away all of your opponent’s steps you’ve won. Game play automatically stops after 2 mins – the one with the most steps still intact wins. Then the next best player picks opponent and category, and this repeats until 4 of the 8 have been eliminated.

This is also repeated in the next round, with two head to heads. This time the player with the most cash makes the choices. Finally, the last two contenders standing face each other, this time on General Knowledge. If the winner knocks out the loser within 2 minutes, they get the chance to play a gold round. Don’t know how that works because it didn’t happen in today’s show. If they don’t, then they walk away with the cash amount they took into the final.

If you’re as long in the tooth as I am, then the first time you watch The Tournament you may well find yourself feeling a little déjà vu, as there’s bits of The Tournament which are at least slightly reminiscent of other shows. But then, quizzes are that sort of genre, and I don’t really mind that. I enjoyed the head to heads, even if they were rather slated towards popular culture and entertainment. That often goes with the territory in daytime quizzes. I didn’t mind Alex Scott in the host’s role either. She’s still a relative newbie to TV presentation, and she’s not a comedian so she’s not going to have the same style as Zander and Richard Osman for example. But she spoke clearly, projected some warmth, and didn’t get in the way, which is pretty much what I want from a host.

So I enjoyed it? Pretty much. Nothing much wrong with it? Well. . . Okay, this is not a HUGE thing, but the show does have a problem with the liberal slices of cheese it serves up at the start. At the start, each of the contestants has to issue their own ‘battle cry’ that is introduce themselves and make a boast about what they are going to do to the opposition. I don’t know how embarrassed the contestants were at having to issue these obviously scripted offerings, but I was cringing for them. There was more wood in their delivery than an Oak Furnitureland advert. Unless your contestants are all ringers and members of Equity, don't script things for them to say, for heaven's sake. Then to add insult to injury, Alex would then remind them of what they'd been told to say during the show. “Well Sue,” she said at one point, “Yesterday you said you were going to boss the rest of them.” Or words to that effect, Sue being a businesswoman. Sadly Sue did not reply, “Well I had to bloody read that out or you wouldn’t have let me on the show.” It’s just something that really grates on me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the kind of show that halts the action to ask the contender about their prize wining collection of egg cosies knitted from their own nostril hair either. But this aspect of the show is just so false that it not only adds nothing to the show, it takes away from it. Also that end game needs work. Not having the gold round felt like an anti climax to me, and I'd definitely want to tweak this.

So, for all that, will it catch on? For me the coin is in the air on this one. It might well find an audience. However my big concern is that as much as I like the 2 minute head to head format, 7 of them in succession is really a bit repetitive. If I were asked to make suggestions to make the show more viewer friendly, first change would be to get rid of the scripted introductions, and the second would be at least a slight change of game play for the second round, and then again for the final. If we look at the Chase, for example, there are three clearly different types of round in the show. Even in Pointless, while the point of the game doesn’t change they very cleverly vary the types of question to provide variety in any single show.

Well, if the producers of the show want the benefit of my suggestions, you know where to find me.