The Mirror reporting that Irishman Darragh Ennis, a former contestant, is the new Chaser Bradley teased end of last year.
I think it’s fair to say pretty much nobody predicted that, so well done if you got that at home.
In other news, Beat the Chasers starts on Monday 27th at 9pm and runs nightly. I suspect this is rather hopeful, but we’ll see.
The reveal feels a bit strange. I would have thought the show would have built it up a bit more.
have they said when his episodes are going to be on. I’m guessing not before Beat the Chasers?
Didn’t the other chasers just suddenly appear one day? Given the nature of the show and episodes shown out of order, they can’t build it up on the show itself, Bradley will just say one day “Or it could be our new chaser” in the intro.
I guess the shows Twitter account could have built something up, but reading the story in the Mirror, it sounds like a classic embargo break that ITV weren’t prepared for hence the disjointed feel and plenty of “A source says”.
I’d imagine more of a fanfare when ITV rush out some sort of confirmation in the coming hours/days
IIRC Jenny Ryan just started turning up randomly in some episodes during the profile of the Chasers at the beginning without us knowing a 5th Chaser was due to join the show and from there it was quite a while before she actually debuted as the Chaser.
They’ve been trailing the 6th Chaser since late last year I think but his episodes won’t debut till the autumn according to the man himself. Not sure if that was always the plan or if new episodes are being held back due to current circumstances.
He’s such a weird choice for this, he was clearly a good contestant but nothing so special that he’s Chaser material. I thought it was going to be one of the Chase Winners team from Quizmaster.
Potentially they might not have been able to get him for Quizmaster if he had already been cast as a Chaser by that point?
Someone who faced Paul Sinha and earned £9k in a cash builder? Sounds like a good choice to me!
I’d be curious to know if someone with closer connections to the quizzing circuit could confirm or deny whether he has established form; I don’t see him playing in the BQA events, the QLL or LearnedLeague. It’s quite possible that he’s smashing it in a tough league in Oxford, but this isn’t immediately obvious.
I’m sure he’ll be easily good enough, otherwise they wouldn’t have picked him, and the backstory of having been a contestant is irresistible. Given that the UK Chase isn’t just broadcast in the UK, I wonder if his non-UK heritage adds to his perceived appeal?
Noting how accomplished the existing five Chasers are at quizzing, I note that if they were actually completely unbeatable then there wouldn’t be a show, and some Chasers have been pretty damn close to unbeatable at points. Being a Chaser is also about playing some degree of a character as well as quizzing, and I’m curious to know how that’s going to turn out, and whether he’ll be prepared to lean in to the showbizzier elements of the show. For instance, can he sing nearly as well as Jenny?
In the meantime, Sat.1 has revealed the 10 contestants on The Mole:
https://www.sat1.de/tv/the-mole-wem-kannst-du-trauen/kandidaten
Aaron, 25 from Cologne, a music and germanistics student
Colleen, 24 from Cologne, a psychology student
Jessica, 53 from Leverkusen, self-employed waitress
Martin, 28 from Munich, director of his own company and professional long driver
Paula, 23 from Kassel, influencer and care management student
Samara, 32 from Bad Teinach-Zavelstein, acrobat and circus school owner
Silvia, 37 from Berlin, a kindergarten teacher
Udo, 47 from Hamm, a professional driver
Wolfgang, 66 from Hannover, retired banker and insurance broker
Yves, 29 from Karlsruhe, model, actor and life coach
Average age of 36.4.
Starts May 6th and will be presented by some cowboys.
Average age is broadly in line with what Belgium’s been giving us the past couple of years, so that’s a good sign.
Interesting the title has changed since the previous version. Was “Der Maulwurf: Die Abenteuershow” (The Mole: The Adventure Show) in its original incarnation, but now it’s “The Mole – Wem Kannst Du Trauen?” (The Mole: Who Can You Trust?). I get the subtitle change, but I wonder why they’ve changed the The Mole from German to English. It’s not like, say, The Amazing Race where the thing is such a global brand that it makes sense to use the title for a foreign version for marketing purposes.
I think they might have changed the title simply because Maulwurf (as it’s called in German) isn’t that common as a synonym for traitor anymore. Whenever I explain the show people need a few seconds to understand the title, so they might just want to try to make The Mole the branded word for it, so it doesn’t seem like knowledge is required.
Also they play a lot with the show being the ultimate psychological experiment instead of the adventure aspect hence the new subtitle. I fear they might overplay it a bit. It’s right that it is a sort of psychological game show, but the adventure bit is what is giving it the edge.
And from the trailers I think they combine the first Belgian comeback season with the Mexico one, but maybe my memory about when each challenge was used doesn’t serve me right.
So this new Chaser has already commenced filming? I imagine he would have been involved in this year’s Celebrity Shows that were going to be filmed this month but were postponed.
For anyone that hasn’t skipped ahead with the Belgian Mole, the community have kindly put together subtitles for Episode 3 whilst Natalia is away/busy
Hi everybody, we made subtitles for Episode 3 for our friends and will share them with you. They are not as good as Natalia’s, I hope you do not mind. The subtitles are the .ass files in the Google Drive you can find here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eJ30uVSrZLl4Bnl_ozXEehhhgD7vIwcs . You probably need VLC Media Player to play the video with subtitles. Instructions on downloading the episodes are also available. If you want to help out with translation of the next episodes, leave a reply!
Cheers, I’ve added this to the Episode 3 link in the Belgian Mole comments.