Weekdays, 2:15pm,
BBC1
The speedy return of the afternoon quiz with Rick Edwards where a group of thirty 24 contestants must try and answer multiple choice questions but one of the choices is impossible (i.e. they satisfy none of the conditions in the question) and if they pick that they’re eliminated for the rest of the day’s show. The daily winner gets a chance to win the £10,000 contained within the exclamation mark.
Enjoyed the first series, especially the hilariously brutal episodes when there were about two people left to contest round three, and we enjoyed the quickfire head-to-head-to-head where you had to quickly figure out whether a question was nonsense or not. This is a longer run of thirty episodes so I’m intrigued to see if they’ve made any changes – last time you stayed on the show until you saw the final question twice, with double the length of the run is there a limit to how many episodes you can be in the gallery for? Do the coins falling out look a bit more spectacular this time round? I’m sure we’ll find out in due course.
A Digital Spy forums member was a contestant on this series. They said that they changed the contestants after 10 episodes for this series..
Only other major changes are a drop from 30 contestants to 24, and once you’re through to the final, that’s it. You don’t get a second go, win or lose.
Just 24? Hm, curious to see whether that means we’ll have more episodes where the entire pool is eliminated and, thus, un-eliminated. Nevertheless, unless they change something really big, this is still at the top of my list so far for new 2017 quizzes. (But where the blazes is that oft-promised third series of 1000 Heartbeats??)
Damn, no more double jackpots
One thought springs to mind: I assume if they’re rotating all contestants out after ten games, they’re not going to be replacing contestants who leave? Or would new contestants come in but be on an independent timer from everyone else?
I’m *slightly* reminded of Going for Gold, and the way the intro elimination round had fewer contestants each time it came around.
They replaced people in the thirty who left last time so I expect it would work the same way here.
I think the closest modern equivalent would be 15-1 where you get three chances to make the final but once you’re there you leave. They’ll be a mass exodus of people after three days but eventually everyone’s on a slightly different timezone.
I might be wrong about this as it turns out, their introduction made it sound like effectively three blocks of ten shows rather than 30 shows. We’ll see!
We sort-of got an answer to this at the beginning of Friday’s show, where Rick said that “for most of you,” this was the halfway point of their two-week run.
I stand corrected: At the end of Episode 10, all players were replaced, regardless of how long they’d been on. (That’s not very nice, although I guess it makes the production logistics a bit more flexible.)
Hmm – “Who preceded Bruce Forsyth as the host of the BBC show The Generation Game?” was deemed Impossible in today’s Final “as he was the first host” but it could surely be argued either way as his second run was preceded by Larry Grayson (which was the contestant’s answer).
I’m still at work so will watch when I get in, but yes that doesn’t sound legit, and in a show like this it’s extremely important that there’s no wiggle room.
Yeah, if that was me playing I’d have kicked up quite the fuss now I’ve seen it. Like I say, because of the theme of the show the questions need to be absolutely watertight. It’s a shame, but the wronged contestant still won, so…
Still enjoyed it, none of the tweaks feel like they’ve done anything substantial. Loved one guy falling for the gag ‘Nickberry’ answer early on – people falling for gag answers and mass eliminations are my fave bits.
Interestingly, they omitted the first question of today’s show because it contained an error.
I read a DigitalSpy forum thread about Impossible, and a former contestant put up the question. It would have been:
Which breed of dog was named Best In Show at Crufts 2017?
A – American Springer Spaniel
B – English Springer Spaniel
C – Jerry Springer Spaniel
The answer should have been ‘American COCKER Spaniel’.
Clearly C should have been Joe Cocker Spaniel then.
Or Jarvis 😉
I was thinking Jarvis.
I still don’t quite understand why Andrew’s comments all need approval before they show up.
Andrew, try posting with the name “Andrew Kesh Sullivan”. I don’t know anyone else who uses an apostrophe in their name.
The first time a name is used I have to approve it, so be warned.
Seems a bit of an oversight for the Coin Machine Logistics gaffer to not not fill up his gadget with the new £1 coin…
When were these recorded? I don’t think the new £1’s been out that long. Either that or they simply had a load left over from the end of the last series they would rather not waste.
End of March to mid-April was the recording timeframe for this. The new £1 coin was launched on March 28th, but the old coins are still legal tender until October, I think
!mpossible returned to BBC1 daytime yesterday it was watched by 624K (13.3%)
I imagine that’ll grow, although I think it’s been pre-empted today for extended news coverage from Manchester.
No, the show still aired today. The news coverage ended at 13:45.
Fair enough!
Monday 22nd May 2017: Ratings:
Pointless 2.87m
Bargain Hunt 1.78m (R)
Tipping Point 1.66m
Antiques Roadtrip (R) 1.31m
Celebrity EggHeads 1.20m
Babushka 1.03m
Debatable 762K
Dickinsons Real Deal 729K
!mpossible 642K (New Series)
Masterpiece 578K
This seems to be struggling second time around, hovering around 550-600k, 13-13.5%.
Even accounting for weather I’m slightly baffled, it was regularly doing over a million and 15-16% previously.
Edit: Although Bank Holiday Monday 1.26m and 14.7%. So there we are. Earlier 1:30 slot.
Good stuff, this is picking up a bit of steam, regularly around 850k and just under 15%.
It turns out that at the end of a two week window, the whole pack gets replaced – i.e. they’re NOT all on their own personal 10-show limit – meaning that there was one new player today who only had one show to try to win!
(There was also an amazing 10-player elimination on only the second question of the day, leading to a “last man standing” winner in the third round)
Other points of note…
There have been four £10,000 winners already in just 10 shows!
It’s now listed as Impossible rather than !mpossible on the BBC website so comes under “I” on iPlayer
Bit unfair for people who may have traveled quite far for just one episode recording. I hope they got compensation in form of transportation costs.
Generally speaking in the UK contestants are comped travel and hotels and I can’t imagine the BBC not paying for it.
Compare and contrast to the US, that’s why the runners up on Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune get money to make up for the fact they make their own way there.
When I was on Radio 4’s ‘Counterpoint’ in Manchester, my husband and I got full travel expenses from Scotland to Manchester, dinner, B. & B. at a very good hotel, and I got £50 appearance fee!
I’m finally catching up on all the episodes I missed during vacation, and there was an unusual occurrence on 15 June. One contestant apparently became ill off-camera during the first qualification round (“Unfortunately, she’s feeling a bit poorly”), and she was declared to be eliminated for that day.