The Chase

Remember when Brooke Burns hosted Dog Eat Dog? It was one of many contest shows where they tried to drag things out for dramatic effect. The Chase does a little of that, but, for the most part, the pace is speedy, due mostly to the timed rounds of questioning.

The Chase pits a 3-person team of strangers against The Beast aka Mark Labbett, a tested and proved British quiz expert.

First, each team member must independently answer questions in a timed round, accumulating money, and then defend his winnings by simultaneously answering multiple choice questions, hoping he gets more right than The Beast does. These rounds are handicapped, but The Beast can sometimes overcome the deficits. Failure to avoid The Beast in this chase results in elimination.

The contestants remaining after the eliminations join forces against The Beast to defend their accumulated monies. First, they must jointly answer as many questions as possible within a 2-minute time period. Then The Beast tries to answer more questions within a 2-minute period. The teams gets a lead of 3 questions if 3 team members survived the elimination rounds (2 if only two survived, etc.)

Part of what makes the game stimulating are the graphic depictions of "the chase" showing The Beast's marker trying to run down the markers of the contestants.

The questions asked are neither too difficult nor too easy. As I said, most of the gameplay has a brisk pace. And Brooke interjects encouraging comments and evaluations of the game's progress without slowing the pace too much.

The most welcome surprise was that The Beast, though a tough competitor, is not all business. He has a personality and a playful sense of humor. The previews gave me the impression that facing him would be like facing a stone-faced man without much personality.

Note that it is conceivably possible for one member of the 3-person team to do 90% of the work only to get 1/3 of the final winnings. But in my opinion, that is no worse than Jeopardy!'s format, which often allows a weaker player to beat a much superior player by virtue of the single-question Final Jeopardy round.

I will definitely continue watching The Chase (on GSN).

I love watching the chase and my favouritechaser has to be Mark. On the whole I think it is a great game show. However there is one thing that always bugs me and which I think is really unfair. This is in the final chase. The contestants get 2 minutes to answer questions and so does the chaser. However if the contestants get one wrong, or they pass, Bradley reads out the answer before moving on, thereby cutting into their 2 minutes. This doesn't happen with the Chasers because if they get one wrong the clock is stopped and the contestants get their opportunity to push the chaser back. If they get the question wrong Bradley reads out the answer before the clock is restarted for the chaser. This in my view is unfair and could make the difference between the contestants or the chaser winning. This may seem trivial but it could add up to one or two more questions in the 2 minutes allowed.

Smart, exciting and unique. Brooke is a great hostess and the Beast is such a character. Each episode is fun

This is about as great as a quiz show can get, frankly. It has a fully realized concept of the "David vs Goliath" and plays into it with its set design, sounds, music, etc. Brook Burns is a fantastic host as well, having a ton of personality and great interaction with Mark Labbett, as well as being able to read the questions clearly at a rapid pace for the timed rounds. And of course, The Beast is phenomenal, being legitimately intimidating and providing a great challenge to the team. Of course, the game itself is awesome well, with a fantastic pace, an appropriate cash prize and perfect level of difficulty. Obviously things are harder for the chaser than the team, but it has to be: even as is, only 25% of teams win. All in all, a great gameshow that I think is an underrated classic.

This is my favorite show except for the sometimes crude way of taking the questions. Alex Trebek on Jepardy would never stand for this. It is inappropriate especially for this kind of show and certainly not necessary.

Also, Brook is great and has a great figure but again, for this type of show, why does she sometimes wear skirts so very short??

I hope the show will continue but with attention to these matters.