Beat The Chasers is a brand new prime time spin on ITV’s smash-hit quiz show The Chase.
The new series, hosted by Bradley Walsh, is challenging contestants to take on two, three, four or all five Chasers at once.
Those competing will go head to head with Mark ‘The Beast’ Labbett, Anne ‘The Governess’ Hegerty, Paul ‘The Sinnerman’ Sinha, Jenny ‘The Vixen’ Ryan and Shaun ‘The Dark Destroyer’ Wallace.
Explaining the format, Anne shared: “One contestant comes and does a ‘Cash Builder’ for up to £5,000 and then they have the option of facing between two and five Chasers to see if they can bring the money home.
“They’ll be made various offers – they may well be facing fewer Chasers for less money, or we might offer the contestant the chance to take on all five Chasers for loads of money, but we get almost the same amount of time that they do.
“I think what everyone’s going to notice is how exciting it is! The game going back and forth between the Chasers and the contestants is like a tennis match. There are very close finishes – that was tremendously exciting.”
While the Chasers are playing as a team, it seems as though things got a bit competitive between some of them during filming.
Mark admitted: “Paul and I would both admit there were times we started to play against each other and were trying to be the first one on the buzzer. We had to tell each other, ‘It doesn’t matter who gets it right, as long as one of us does’.”
Jenny added: “You do want to show off a little bit and make your point that you deserve to be one of the five. We were having to remind ourselves we’re playing as team.”
And Jenny also revealed: “Mark keeps an eye on the stats. That’s for our benefit. It’s like sport, really. At the end of a football match the coach will have a chat with the team saying, ‘This was really good, that was really good, but this needs improving.’
“We’ll be getting better and better every time and working together as a team.”
Meanwhile, it’s been revealed that some of the contestants were recognisable faces from the quizzing world.
Jenny explained: “When people come in and we’ve already got an impression of them and we know that they’re good, it lumps a bit of pressure on us. Some come back because they’ve got a score to settle with a particular one of us. I think that adds an extra thrill to it.
“You might think that we want contestants to do badly. But that’s not right. We want the contestants to do amazingly, to set us a really good game– still for us to win – but we want a really good target, a really good battle.”
As for who comes out on top, you’ll have to watch the show, but host Bradley did tease: “One contestant I was really welling up over the fact they’d won the money. It was a very poignant moment. They ended up going home with a lot of money – it was great!”
Beat The Chasers will be stripped across a week on ITV, airing nightly at 9PM from Sunday 3 January.
