New Quiz Show: The Finish Line (BBC1 Weekdays)

Yes, there’s a new daytime TV quiz on the block, dearly beloved, ”The Finish Line” that I caught for the first time yesterday. Now I do always try to be fair to new quiz shows, so I think that it is important to judge it for what it is, namely, a daytime TV quiz, airing on BBC1 weekdays at 4:30pm. This is never going to be a high-level quiz that only those with a serious GK pedigree can play along with at home, let alone win. No, this is placed within a relatively crowded market, the best examples of which are (in my opinion and in no particular order) Pointless, Bridge of Lies, The Chase, Tenable and Impossible. Quizzes which, while aimed at the average family at home still offer something for the real quizzers to get their teeth into.

I first knew that this was coming when co-host Sarah Greene appeared on Claudia Winkleman’s Radio 2 show last Saturday to plug it. As all hosts of brand new quiz shows are expected to do she was selling ‘The Finish Line’ as something totally new in the field. – Heard that before – thought I. She was also making a virtue of the fact that a lot of the time when someone comes into the show feeling very confident because they have had a lot of success in pub quizzes over the years, most of the time these are not the people who win. I wasn’t sure that this would be a point in the show’s favour if I’m totally honest.

Well, I caught up with the 2^nd show yesterday. It’s fronted by Roman Kemp, which gives us a hosting team of young – mature – male – female. And he does perfectly well for the kind of show that it is and the timeslot that it occupies. I have to say that for an old Blue Peter watcher such as myself it was nice to see Sarah Greene, although there is an argument that she is a little underused in the PROF seat. (That’s the acronym for Pointless Richard Osman Friend – I just invented it. Good eh? No charge if you want to use it yourself, but a credit would be nice.)

So - what's the big idea of the show? What it says on the tin. Answer enough questions to get across the finish line. Ah, but how do you do that? Well, from what I saw , it seems to work like this. There are five contestants in the show. After the start, Roman introduces the first, has some inconsequential chat (yawn yawn- look, you know from previous reviews that I’m a misanthrope and really don’t care for this sort of thing.) then they get asked a set of quick fire questions of a variety of types, some of which are identificational. They must keep going until they have answered five correctly. Sarah then reveals how quickly they did so.

Now, the speed is important since it determines which lane each of the contestants will occupy on the track. I have to be honest, I was reminded just a little bit of the short lived Ejector Seat from years back. The contestants don’t have chairs, though, but moving podiums. So the contestant who answered five questions in the quickest time is in lane 1. When the track round starts, their podium starts moving towards the finish line. They are given a question and if they answer correctly their podium keeps moving. If they answer wrongly their podium stops. Meanwhile the podium in Lane 2 has started moving. If the contestant in lane 2 answers their question correctly they keep moving. If not, they stop. Whatever happens contestant three is now moving. . . look, you get the point. If your podium is first, second, third or fourth across the finish line, happy days. If it’s fifth, sorry but you leave with nothing. Then we come back off the track for another round to determine the lane order for the next track round.

And so it goes on, last across the line goes out. When we get down to two, the first across the line goes through to the final to play for the money, and the other one doesn’t. In the final, the contestant is chased down the rack by advancing arrows. Keep answering correctly and it’s a piece of cake. Start getting stopped by wrong answers and you’ll get caught by the arrows and leave with nowt. The prize? A very respectable five grand.

That’s the show. What’s the verdict, though? Well, there’s nothing in it that made me cringe. If you remember the recent ‘The Tournament’, there was a show that I rather liked, but I found that the battle cries at the start were toe-curlingly embarrassing. There’s nothing like that in “The Finish Line”. That’s good. Both hosts were professional, warm and avoided talking too much. That’s good. The questions? Well, you certainly had a real mix – nothing particularly difficult, but then it’s not that kind of show. As you might expect, being as it’s a daytime show there was just a wee bit too much current entertainment, but that’s just my opinion as a grumpy old git now galloping towards 60.

Unlike a lot of new shows, it seems to me that the gameplay itself has been pretty well worked out. I can’t off the top of my head suggest any tweaks. However, I do think that there is a fundamental issue with the show. This is it. I think that a lot of quiz shows of this sort in this time slot live or die on how much fun they are for viewers to play along with at home. Ok. Now as I said a minute ago, I’m getting on a bit. I’ve no doubt that my recall isn’t quite as quick as it once was, but it’s still pretty fast. And I’m afraid that there were times when I found I wasn’t quite keeping up with one or two of the contestants. Only for parts of a round here and there, but nonetheless it’s true. And I really like quickfire questions. I like getting through so many questions quickly. But even I found it frustrating at times. How well the average viewer can cope, I just don’t know. Now, that’s a tribute to how well the contestants did, but whether that will cut any ice with the casual viewer I just don’t know.

So I find myself sitting on the fence a little. I just don’t know whether this is going to appeal to enough viewers to build an audience that will bring it more than the BBC obligatory couple of series. Time will tell.