Breakaway

Breakaway

I finally got around to catching up with the first episode of new BBC 2 tea time quiz show Breakaway. I actually had a phone audition for this but it did not go any further L. Nick Hancock is the host and the game starts with 6 players and a respectable £10,000 up for grabs.

The game involves having to answer 30 questions with the contestants moving towards the end with each correct answer. After each set of three questions the contestants get the chance of breaking away and moving towards the prize on their own breakaway path……..basically they can ditch the team and try to go it alone. Lives can be earned to help the solo run as going alone means you risk getting eliminated. This is done in a buzzer question at the end of every set of three and not only is a live earned but the winner chooses the next category. In this first episode the team seemed keen to stick together from the off.

It did not take long for Damien to Break Away though and he had earned two lives so, not blaming him at all, decided to give it a shot. At this point he got the choice to ask someone to join him on the Break Away track…..this is a choice that can be refused and was on this occasion.  Breaking Away means your team are left lagging behind as you keep progressing towards the goal. Get one wrong, loose a live…..loose all your lives and you’re out. This happened to poor Damien on question 17. Once the Breakaway contestant gets it wrong, the team are brought up to the stage the Breakaway contestant ended on. Getting questions wrong means money is lost.

The end gets quite tense as you wait to see who may or may not breakaway and it makes for good TV viewing. The questions were nicely pitched, Hancock was a good host and the format flowed well. Again though a 45 minute show could easily have been cut down into a 30 minute format if they cut some of the chat but the questions do come thick and fast.  A lot of pop culture based questions as you would expect but still some nice questions in there!