Mastermind 2023 Semi Final Preview

So, shall we have a look at the table of qualifiers? Here it is

Michael McPartland	Arnold Schwarzenegger	14	0	17	0	31	0
Lee Ansett	Michael Palin’s Travel Documentaries	12	1	16	0	28	1
Joe Andrew	Emily Wilding Davison	13	0	15	0	28	0
Stuart Field	Jonathan Creek	10	0	17	0	27	0	2
Ben Whitworth	The History of the Orkney Islands	12	0	15	0	27	0
George Scratcherd	The Wines of Portugal	12	0	14	2	26	2
Ben Spicer	Peaky Blinders	15	0	11	1	26	1
Ben Farren	Christopher Hitchens	12	0	13	0	25	0
Holly Franklin	The BBC Sitcom Ghosts	13	0	11	2	24	2
Mark Rogers	The Universal Frankenstein Films of the 1930s	13	0	11	0	24	0
Alex Shilton	The Films of Wes Anderson	11	0	13	0	24	0
William Andrews	Theda Bara	10	0	14	0	24	0
Jonathan Evans	James Parkinson	11	0	11	1	22	1
Blake Robinson	Torchwood	11	0	11	0	22	0
Alison Rose	The Life of Anne Lister	12	0	10	0	22	0
Sam Swift	Sir Elton John	12	0	10	0	22	0
James Beeby	The Mitford Sisters	11	0	10	2	21	2
James Davidson	The Films of Nicole Kidman	10	1	11	1	21	2
Anna Milford Goldstein	The Great Fire of London	6	0	14	0	20	0
Ann Mayner	Charles Rennie Mackintosh	11	0	8	2	19	2
Darren Ross	The Jacobite Rebellion of 1745	11	0	8	1	19	1
Stewart McNicol	Hyenas	8	0	11	0	19	0
Stephen Finn	Mithridates the Great	9	0	9	2	18	2
Colin Rogers-Marsh	Films of Judy Garland	4	1	13	0	17	1	1

 So, picking the finalists seems pretty easy, doesn’t it? Pick the top six from the table. Well, no, actually. Our job of picking potential finalists is made harder for a couple of reasons :-

·       I don’t think that the semi finals are ‘seeded’ as such. Now, it’s over a decade since I last discussed this with any member of a production team, so what I say is pure supposition on my part, and so you have to bear this in mind. Back in the day I was told that the production team were more concerned with putting good mixes of subjects together for the show, rather than ensuring that all of the top performers in the heat were kept apart from each other. Now last year it did seem that the semis each had a decent spread of contenders. But there’s no guarantee that our top six are going to be kept apart. If it should happen that two of them ae in the same semi, then only 1 of them can make the final.

·       We only have one performance on which to judge their potential. I would argue that anyone who can score fifteen on GK in a first round heat has a good level of General Knowledge and it’s reasonable to expect they can reach a similar level of performance in the semi. But it doesn’t always work out like that. Someone can have the round of their life in the first round, then a ‘mare in the semi. It happens. Likewise, someone can have an uncharacteristically middle-of-the range GK in the first round, then blow everyone away with their GK in the semi final. And that’s just concentrating on the GK. Unfortunately there’s always someone who hasn’t got to grips with their semi final specialist subject.

For these reasons, predicting the finalists is an inexact science to say the least. Bearing all of that in mind then, I do think that the five contenders who posted GK scores of 15 points or higher look worth at least an each way bet. It’s worth noting that with the exception of joint GK top scorer Stuart Field all of them scored at least 12 on their specialists as well. So they all can learn a specialist to the standard required for success.

The person heading the table after the first round doesn’t always go on to win the whole series. But you have to say that Michael McPartland was comfortably the most impressive performer in the round. Michael’s a very experienced quizzer who has been playing in serious high level quizzes for a long time. He won’t bottle it. I don’t want to scupper his chances by predicting he will win the whole series, but anybody else is going to have to play very well to beat him.