I just want to publicly thank the crew of the chase, and in particular one producer (who I won’t name publicly) and Mara Lejins.
As some of you may know my 8 year old is currently battling paediatric cancer. One of her favourite shows to watch is the chase and when she’s in the hospital it’s a must watch.
I sent them an email asking if we could get a get well message from Mara as she’s my daughters fav chaser. Not only did they do this, they had Mara ask some trivia questions about her favourite things.
This has been a great pick me up for her and she’s been showing all the nurses at the hospital her special video.
She had a pre-intro sequence in today’s episode. Confirming the ‘promotion’.
Issa also confirms that the intro is cut back to 5 of the 7 chasers to save time. The ‘Chaser of the Day’ will feature in the pre-game intro for episodes from Season 13 onwards.
Likely that Issa, Bryce and Matt will feature in most (if not all) intros as they film the bulk of the episodes. All others have full-time jobs in the legal profession or are based elsewhere (e.g the UK).
Why would it be a turn off? It’s very rarely I have seen the chaser be beaten by contestants. It could be a gamer changer. I’m not saying to do it once a week or anything, just throw it in here and there.
Because the whole premise of the show is to see if the contestants can make it to the end and beat the Chaser? And the show is the number 1 show at 5pm. They’re not going to change anything anytime soon
But do the celebrities have the calibre of Chasers knowledge-wise? They might have the personalities but it’s a dud idea for a quiz show considering it’s contestants vs quizmasters, not celebrities.
There are some intelligent celebrities and people in the public domain.
I can understand the opposition to the idea given they aren’t said to be “chasers”, but even if you consider some of the former game show hosts like Tony Barber or John Burgess, I wouldn’t call those two stupid.
No-one is saying there isn’t smart celebrities out there, but there is a marked difference between that and the level of the Chasers. The whole point of the show is pitting the average person against the best quiz minds in Australia, and you instantly cheapen the format if you reduce the Chaser to a celebrity guest regardless of how smart they are. By all means, have more celebrity specials to highlight their intelligence, but leave the Chaser role as it is.
Oh please, Mara Leijins is not as intelligent as you think. I have seen how if she is struggling with an answer she looks at the podium in front of her (which I assume has a screen of some sort). In one episode she couldn’t get the 12 questions to stop the contestants and they were very easy questions she had - even an actor from Home And Away could have got those questions right!!!
Mara’s issue is not her intelligence, but her speed. On last night’s episode, she lost to an 11 step final chase giving 13 pushback opportunities. There was one question she got wrong and immediately blurted out the right answer afterwards. A few of the questions she got wrong weren’t difficult, but because she was trying to answer them too quickly and was getting flustered, she missed them.
Maybe you are right that a H&A actor would have answered those questions correctly. But there is a difference between knowing the answer and being able to answer it correctly on the clock with a set target, knowing that the expectation is that you will win and that one slip up can make your job even harder with a pushback.
