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).

Pros: The host; The Beast and so on Cons: The "suspense" of whether the contestants got the answers right/wrong is obvious

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

I never saw this when it was first on TV, but became a fan on Game Show Network. This is certainly far better than the recent ABC remake! Brooke and the Beast are both missing from the remake and the remake is a flop!

In my personal opinion, "The Chase" is the best trivia show since "Jeopardy!". Why do I say that? Because the pace is just right, the money is nothing to sneeze at (especially when there's a Super Offer), and it's an all-around fun show to watch and play along with. Plus, Brooke and The Beast can make it funny, I learn things I might not have picked up otherwise, and social media keeps the production staff in touch with the fan base. I enjoy seeing daily trivia questions online, in addition to the ones in the show. I get those correct most of the time too! However, I do have some constructive criticism as well. First, there really should be some kind of name announcement other than the podium lighting up, because with no announcement, I've seen several instances where the wrong person answered and therefore Brooke was unable to accept. Second, I think there could be a way to get the audience to participate as well, such as taking a poll on selected questions. Other than that, keep up the good work, Game Show Network!