Article

Community

Culture

Film & TV

Fun & play

5 February 2025

5 min read

Here’s why strangers unite on The Chase

Chasing the prize isn't everything on the TV quiz show.

Stuart Haynes

Stuart is communications director for the Diocese of Liverpool.

Four quiz show contestants stand behind a table with the show host.

“I’ve had a great day Brad”. How quickly we fall into the staple clichés of daytime TV quiz shows. I tried to avoid hitting that trap, but my lips uttered that gem, as well as pushback phrases exhorting other contestants not to take a low offer, as I made my way through the lexicon of phrases to be uttered by a quiz show contestant.

Yes, I was on The Chase. A longstanding mainstay of ITV’s teatime schedule this popular quiz combines individual rounds, a multiple-choice battle against the Chaser of the day, in my case the one known as The Beast (in reality a nice guy). It all culminates in a team effort to score as many points as possible to set a target the Chaser cannot possibly beat. (another show cliché). All this presided over by the ever-genial Bradley Walsh makes it a bankable show in the schedules.

So why did I end up (nearly a year ago now) in Elstree studios with three people I had never met trying to win some cash? Well to be honest for me winning the cash was not the most important thing. My main aim was to not look a fool. My greatest fear was to get a low score in the first round inviting inevitable scorn and a trolling over my visibly clear lack of intellect or general knowledge. (To be clear as well, ITV prepare us for any potential abuse we might get, giving advice on protecting our social media and access to a helpline. I did feel protected).

Actually, another fear was getting a bible or religion question wrong. I avoided that.

If I met my first objective to not look stupid, my next aim was to get into the final round (otherwise my aunt would have done better than me and that would be disastrous for my poor little ego). But overall, it was the experience, it was the day out, it was chance to step outside of the daily routine that drew me to the long audition process and brought me on air.

I would love to say that as a Christian minister I did it for God. I didn’t. I considered whether to wear my clerical shirt rejecting that for, as a self-supporting minister, I have developed my own rule for wearing it; to signal I am in active ministry. I was open about my faith and had a nice chat with Brad about churches and churchgoing. But this was never going to be about converting folk through knowing facts about history or music.

And watchable television in the context of a daytime quiz is about telling a story. It’s almost a pantomime story we willingly enter involving heroes and villains.

But I learnt a great deal about life through this. First, the day was surreal. It started with the awkward meeting of us four contestants in a hotel lobby uncertain who was also a contestant until we were brought together by a show member. We were then welcomed into the Chase world, an experience well known to the team supporting us - they work on up to three shows a day, five days a week. With our electronic devices temporarily confiscated we were in a timeless environment effectively ceding control to the team who guided us carefully to the filming. This included preparing our minds and talking points so that we all have interesting stories to chat through with Brad.

And we start to bond as a small group. Diverse though we were we found shared interests, common bonds, and we grew from a collection of individuals to be a team with a common purpose slowly moving through stages of wardrobe and makeup towards the big moment of entering the studio. That bond extended to the crew looking after us who for that time were friends, supporters and guides leading us through what was to us was the exotic mystery of filming, but I am sure to them was just another day. Through them we learnt the etiquette, the time to talk, the direction to look, how to move and when we can relax and sip water from personalised Chase water bottles

We realised how each of us has different reasons for being there, different desires, different backgrounds and different approaches. But we are coming together with one purpose. To best the Chaser winning the panto styled quiz.

That bonding is important if we are to work together, to give each other advice and support. And I believe the nature of the show has changed over time. My memory was that when it was first aired contestants would be more in it for themselves and almost scorn those taking lower offers and diminishing from the overall prize pot. Now it is about team, it is about the knowledge that only together do we stand a chance of winning, only through mutual support will the cash by ours.

The filming is live but broken up so camera positions can be moved to get the shots needed. We were even interrupted by an incident that ended up in their blooper reel. Everyone, especially Bradley, is professional, kind, and friendly but it is clear they have a job to do and do well. So do it they must for their first duty is to produce watchable television.

And watchable television in the context of a daytime quiz is about telling a story. It’s almost a pantomime story we willingly enter involving heroes and villains. We four were the little people fighting a good and wholesome battle against an almighty foe. That foe was the Chaser, The Beast, scornful, patronising, goading and tempting us to mistake. But on our side is the ringmaster, Mr Bradley Walsh, our guide and mentor shepherding us through the emotional ups and downs of our journey to the final. The viewer is hopefully identifying with us having heard our stories rooting for us to win the day.

So, it’s not about quizzing, it’s a story of uniting, belonging, competing while being welcomed into a world that has its own rules and rituals that needs someone to guide the new person through.

We had a great day, we finished our time and were back out onto the street parting company and leaving, as we began, as strangers.

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Article

Attention

Character

Culture

Film & TV

21 January 2025

4 min read

Traitors holds a mirror up to this obsession of ours

The attitude that is eroding empathy.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

The cast and presenter of a competition TV programme assembled in a montage.

BBC.

“So you’re basically calling me Harold Shipman or something?”

2025 may have barely begun but BBC One’s The Traitors has already offered a strong contender for TV moment of the year.

If you’re not familiar with the show – and if you aren’t, where have you been? – a group of strangers head off to a castle in Scotland to earn money through a series of challenges while show host Claudia Winkleman smoulders at the camera. Meanwhile, some competitors are designated ‘Traitors’ and can steal the money at the end of the competition, while the rest – the ‘Faithfuls’ – must unmask the ‘Traitors’, banishing one person each day. In return, the Traitors can ‘murder’ one Faithful a night.

It's stupid and ridiculous and melodramatic. I love it.

Something that has struck me this series is the inability of contestants to imagine that people might behave differently to them. Early on, Dr. Kas “Definitely-Not-Harold-Shipman” Ahmed raises a toast to a ‘murdered’ Faithful. “That’s sketchy,” everyone immediately thinks. “I wouldn’t have done that, and I’m a Faithful, so Kas MUST BE A TRAITOR!”

The group votes to banish him shortly afterwards.

The certainty with which contestants decide someone is a Traitor based on the most minute and innocuous details is incredible. Oooh, Glenda just coughed at an inopportune moment. Obviously a Traitor. Look at Keith taking the stairs two at a time. It’s like he wants to be caught!

The ‘Faithfuls’ seem completely unable to imagine people might be different from them. That they might think differently, or act differently. There is, in other words, a complete lack of empathy.

As the always-absolutely-right-about-everything Brené Brown tells us, sympathy is recognising someone else’s perspective. But empathy is feeling with someone; it is sharing that perspective. And it’s empathy that’s needed for human connection. And it’s empathy that is missing on The Traitors.

All of this ultimately reminds me of the work of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. Taylor is arguably the most influential living philosopher. Much of his work – especially in books like Sources of the Self, and A Secular Age – is concerned with explaining modern western societies, their characteristics, and where those characteristics emerge from.

Taylor claims that these societies have stopped privileging ‘exteriority’ and have started privileging ‘interiority’ instead.

What on earth does that mean?

In 1637, René Descartes says “I think, therefore I am,” and western philosophy never recovers. Descartes is looking for a foundation, a starting point from which he can make sense of himself and the world around him. But this is not easy. What’s to say he’s not hallucinating, or being deceived by a demon, so that the world around him isn’t as it seems?

What’s the one thing he can be sure of? That he thinks!

The fact he’s even thinking and doubting his senses tells Descartes that he is someone or something who exists and thinks. That sounds obvious, but it gives Descartes the foundation from which he can make sense of reality.

As a result of Descartes’ philosophy, we imagine that our very ‘selves’ are located entirely ‘within us’ somehow, with the rest of reality found ‘outside’ ourselves. This is a ‘gap’ of sorts, between us and the world, while the interior self becomes the place where the meaning of our existence is discovered and understood.

Modern life, Taylor says, therefore instils in us a sense of detachment from everyone and everything else. I have my interior world, you have yours. I can never truly know you, and you can never truly know me.

I could be the next Harold Shipman for all you know.

But it wasn’t always like this, Taylor argues. Modernity’s preoccupation with the inner self was preceded by a more outside-centred view of the world.

In this outside-centred worldview, I and the people around me aren’t simply unknowable black holes of interiority. Instead, we are both parts of a broader created realm. And, by virtue of us both being creatures located within something bigger than either of ourselves, this outside-centred view of the world becomes a point of commonality from which we can get to know each other.

Shared humility leads to connection, in other words.

All of this, I think, goes some way to explaining why I’m watching a seemingly lovely doctor having a quasi-breakdown over being misconstrued as a serial killer. The Traitors shows how obsessed we have become with our own interiority. We are inward-looking creatures now. As such, we are often slow to recognise the ways in which our shared place within creation only unites us.

While a little introspection and self-reflection is vital for healthy human flourishing, out-and-out navel-gazing only hinders our ability to connect with those around us. With a little help from Charles Taylor, The Traitors reminds me to get out of my own head and to see beyond myself. To look at the world around me, and to see the people with whom I share it.