Did I claim that the filming of “Beat the Nation” had been excruciating? I take it back. That process was slow and painful at times, with close-ups being taken and retaken after each round has been shot and some of the contestants having to repeat their (sometimes mistaken) answers more clearly for the benefit of the microphones. Under hot studio lights and when you are sitting in the same position on a chipboard set for so long, the cumulative effect is mildly annoying.
The same elements multiplied by one hundred contestants and combined with the eleven and a half hours on an uncomfortable set listening to the desperately sleazy warm-up man run through the same ideas (“jokes” would be overextending the terminology) with three different audiences and taken together with the nature of the game itself made today’s filming torturous. I am not twisted, just bitter that in addition to the above and being sat in the very back row in the darkest, furthest corner, my pathetic knowledge of TV & Films was so cruelly exposed.
Behind each of us was a blue square whose light turned red when you got a question wrong and then just extinguished itself. The questions I was forced to sit in the dark after were:
- In which country was Russell Crowe born?
- Who is the voice of the racing car “Lightning McQueen” in the film “Cars”?
- Which comedienne was in a July 2006 episode of Dr Who?
- In “Wacky Races”, what was the name of the car driven by Luke and Blubber Bear?
- Who plays Lois Lane in the 2006 film “Superman Returns”?
Dermot O’Leary managed to lead five people through their games over three programmes and only one of them won any money. His triumph was marred by serious accusations of cheating made by at least 3 of his fellow contestants. I saw nothing: I probably had my head in my hands (resting my eyes) at the time that a guy called Madi was said to have gestured (with a classic hand-drawn-across-the-throat) for him not to answer “Billy Holiday” to a particular question about a name-change.
1 versus 100 is a format surely destined for rapid oblivion. With a 20% win rate, it will be a turn-off for the viewer and they’d have trouble filling the 100 contestant seats for any great length of time now that those of us media-whores (I count myself as part of the sad club) who follow the game-show trawler in the hope of being thrown some fish (what the hell did Cantona mean?) have experienced it and given it an almighty thumbs-down.
I sat next to Shirley, veteran of shows such as Strike It Lucky, and next to her was Paul. We managed to have a bit of a laugh in the hours of dead time that we were sitting around, but it was at the end of the night, when the audience and Dermot had gone home that tempers began to fray. The production crew asked us to stay seated but didn’t say why and proceeded to film all of the square-colour-changing sequences again (three shows worth). By this time I was in shouting mode. “Madi, Madi, give us a sign,” I taunted, gesturing as he was supposed to have to embarrassed laughs from those around me.
The floor manager tried to quieten us down as everyone became increasingly restless and told us there was “only one more,” when it was clear to us that we were less than half-way through and unlikely to make the pub. “Liar,” I shouted, several times, as he complained he’d never been heckled before. Finally, we were allowed to leave, filing out to get our bags. As we were ‘checked out’, a member of the production team looked us in the eye, took a white ceramic receptacle from a box and offered it to us: “Mug”?
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