Gotta be honest, when I first met him donkeys years ago when we were playing for opposing teams in the South Wales Echo League I never thought Mark would end up doing that!
Fair play to Mark for going across the pond and taking on American quizzers. The knowledge set required to prosper on US tv is completely different and it must be a challenge to master US-centric sports and pop culture questions in particular. As far as comparisons with the UK version go: the difficultly level of questions in the US seems a fair bit higher. Oh, and the host is marginally more attractive than Bradley Walsh...
When I attended the WQC in June at one of the American sites, everyone was complaining about how they rejected pretty much everyone who had been on Jeopardy! or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? with a few exceptions of people who had done really poorly on those shows or inspired Youtube videos for their antics. I hope that if this progresses, they are willing to accept better contestants.
I thought the contestants on the one show I've seen so far (the one Dan posted the link to) were fairly strong, certainly stronger than the average contestants you get on the British version. I've seen very few familiar quizzers on the homegrown version so can only assume there is some inbuilt bias against known quizzers at the audition stage. I was actually a bit surprised they didn't give Mark a more gentle introduction to the US Chase as all 3 contestants seemed pretty handy to me. Taking on decent US quizzers on sets that include a reasonable proportion of US-centric questions is certainly a challenge.
Gotta be honest, when I first met him donkeys years ago when we were playing for opposing teams in the South Wales Echo League I never thought Mark would end up doing that!
ReplyDeleteFunny old world, innit.
Thanks Daniel, that was brilliant! Very slick and I like the Beast sitting there the whole time. Hope we can see some more of them.
ReplyDeleteFair play to Mark for going across the pond and taking on American quizzers. The knowledge set required to prosper on US tv is completely different and it must be a challenge to master US-centric sports and pop culture questions in particular. As far as comparisons with the UK version go: the difficultly level of questions in the US seems a fair bit higher. Oh, and the host is marginally more attractive than Bradley Walsh...
ReplyDeleteI thought it was tougher too all around. I like the US studio with the Chaser always there and they have done a pretty darn good job :)
ReplyDeleteApparently it has already been renewed for a second series as well
When I attended the WQC in June at one of the American sites, everyone was complaining about how they rejected pretty much everyone who had been on Jeopardy! or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? with a few exceptions of people who had done really poorly on those shows or inspired Youtube videos for their antics. I hope that if this progresses, they are willing to accept better contestants.
ReplyDeleteI thought the contestants on the one show I've seen so far (the one Dan posted the link to) were fairly strong, certainly stronger than the average contestants you get on the British version. I've seen very few familiar quizzers on the homegrown version so can only assume there is some inbuilt bias against known quizzers at the audition stage. I was actually a bit surprised they didn't give Mark a more gentle introduction to the US Chase as all 3 contestants seemed pretty handy to me. Taking on decent US quizzers on sets that include a reasonable proportion of US-centric questions is certainly a challenge.
ReplyDelete