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Chess on TV: a winning strategy?
The game's popularity is surging but a new reality TV show struggles to capitalise on the craze
"Chess is the least telegenic thing ever," said The Guardian, and BBC Two’s new elimination game show "Chess Masters: The Endgame" is "so dull it's almost unwatchable".
Host Sue Perkins does her best to give it "warm, 'Bake-Off' vibes" and the 12 contestants have clearly been chosen for their dramatic backstories, but the show struggles to capitalise on the surge of interest in the game that began during lockdown.
The unexpected success of Netflix drama "The Queen’s Gambit" in 2020 "remains modern TV chess's killer first move", said The Telegraph. More people than ever are playing chess and following it online so "you have a huge, sedentary, screen-ready fanbase", but televised chess has never really taken off because the players are static and games take ages.
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Yet "Chess Masters: The Endgame" manages to be "quietly compelling and full of chequered charm", said The Telegraph. In the studio, ex-"Traitors" contestant and chess coach Anthony Mathurin and British grandmaster David Howell explain moves "without patronising more experienced players", with "positively pawn-ographic" injections of innuendo from Perkins.
But can Perkins keep the double entendres going for eight episodes, asked Carol Midgley in The Times. "A long game played in silence between two sedentary people should, technically, be television turkey," but the "wholesome nerdy charm" of "Chess Masters" is indeed seductive. Plus, the programme has a great origin story: BBC producer Camilla Lewis got the idea after seeing her teenage daughter's depression lifted by playing chess online.
The contestants are a diverse bunch who demonstrate the changing demographic of a game once associated with "bookish older men with nose hair". Lula, aka "the Chess Princess", is a 26-year-old content creator and Nick, "the Swashbuckler", learned to play while in prison. The contestants might be endearing, but their nicknames – such as "Smiling Assassin" and "Unrelenting Warrior" – "had the whiff of monikers made up five minutes earlier at a producer's urgent request".
"None of them were any match for The Unimpressed Viewer," said Garry Bushell in the Daily Express. Trying to inject excitement via "daft nicknames" and "slo-mo replays" results in an end product that is "too trite to hook viewers who play chess well, too dull for those who don't".
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It's a "valiant attempt" to drag chess the way of pottery, sewing and playing the piano, said the Irish Independent. But the fundamental problem is that "chess makes pottery, sewing and playing the piano seem positively speedy".
