4:30pm, weekdaily
BBC2
Nick Hancock’s back with surprise afternoon moderate hit Breakaway. There have apparently been some modifications to the game for the second series (from what we can gather fewer questions and the lives and what you can do with them work slightly differently). We discussed series one here.
Let us know what you think.
Just in case anyone needs a reminder, my episode will be shown on the 17th, a week on Wednesday
I liked the improvements. It has an actual title sequence now, the shorter course really works, the final break point being 1 from the end doesn’t feel as slapped-on now, lives being able to be used on the main track to stop the loss of money…
…aaaaand then we get told there’ll be a “champion of champions” style final episode to the series. Did they need that?
Someone’s been reading the comments on here – actual title sequence, shorter track, lives being used on the main track, the loss of the nonsense £1,000 bribe at the start, the disappearance of life stealing…
I’m impressed. And I want a fee.
I’m just realising quite how much I like this format – lots of opportunities for strategy, usually not lampshaded by the host, and they’ve ditched the ones that could be strategic on a high level but overcomplicated the format (life stealing).
That said, I think I’d like it much better without Nick Hancock, or at least if he talked just a little bit less…
It’s funny, I was chatting about ths on Twitter this evening and how on an actual road race the breakaway would start to fight amongst themselves and let the pack catch up, and I windered how I’d model this and ended up with, ugh, the prisoner’s dilemma.
Then TVs Mark Labbett turns up and explains that he’d deliberately step forward an miss the question and assume the pack will take away the other person’s lives. Mind blown, I love it, never considered it.
Nick Hancock appears to be morphing into Roy Walker.
Anyway, glad it’s back.
Nah, we discussed that possibility back after episode two in March.
I dearly want someone to try this deliberate sacrifice and for the pack to go “No, you were the one to break away, we think you are the one who should pay for it” – and for the “armour” and the pack to work together to eliminate the original breaker. Might not be in the pack’s best interest to play it that way, but would be great TV if they could pull it off.
Anyway, just watched the first episode of series two. It’s very good – better than I was expecting. The changes to the life mechanism are for the better. The changes to the presentation are for the better. It’s good to have a game show with some legitimate gameplay to it, and Nick Hancock has a very good grasp of the potential and complexities of the game, even pointing out the potential for sabotage. He also has rather good gags, with less reliance on piss-taking than I remember. I’m shocked by how much I like his hosting this time round, albeit based on only one episode.
The change from 30 questions to 25 is interesting. Normally I’d say that any decrease in decisions is a change for the worse, and a nominal 25 questions (as opposed to decisions) in 45 minutes is a bit on the light side, though when it’s 25 correctly-answered questions, plus breakaway questions, there’s more substance there. However, the show has a rhythm to it. If this is an instance of a show improving by featuring less gameplay material – possibly even if just by virtue of becoming slightly less repetitive – then that is a rarity, arguably a vanishing rarity.
However, the consensus last time was roughly that we stopped watching the first series after about a week, no matter how much we admired it. I wonder if the second series, with its attendant confidence and atmosphere, will fare better?
I’d say that the format has international hit potential written over it, but I’m tempted to wonder how it would fare on a commercial broadcaster. Would introducing ad breaks before the breakaway points work? Is it too much of a global cliche to have a question and use the ad break to strand the answer?
Apparently it’s already sold to Egypt, of all places.
The pacing does seem to have improved by reducing the question count by… Err… Six (One life question has gone), yeah, and since they’re doing the lives on the track with a five second timer the extra content may help, yes.
But even the little details like making the lives centre aligned rather than right aligned like I think they were last season has improved the presentation. Although the laser finish line still feels like it shouldn’t be there to me (It just looks cumbersome for the host to invite the contestants across the finish line rather than for them to cross the line naturally at the end of the game, but move it to where that would happen and the finish line would need to be crossed in order to answer the final question.
But, yeah, improvements all round, the reduction in questions has helped the pacing (Mainly the way the first couple of categories was basically irrelevant), lives on the pack track mattering now is nice, the opening titles contains a decent representation of a fairly normal progression of the game, and so on.
I am not sure i like the lighter feel to the studio, i prefer the darker feel to the set that series 1 had.
However i do like the other changes, one of the things i wanted to see most, was the removal of the life stealing and the chance to use them for the team, which they have done, so i am happy. I liked the format as it was but feel it is even better now.
To clarify my suggestion, the pack will normally act to remove lives from the breakaway player with the fewest lives to get rid of him and her and reduce the breakaway to just one.
So if you are in a two person breakaway towards the end of the game and your breakaway partner has less/no lives left, theatrically get a question wrong and watch as the pack get rid of your partner leaving you to (hopefully) grab all the cash for yourself.
Obviously an element of risk but I reckon it has to be a viable trick if you have a life (or better still 2 or 3) remaining…
As a man with no lives with 9 questions to go… I didn’t appreciate Hancock’s suggestion that stepping forward with a deliberately wrong answer might be a good idea. However, if Mike had done that, I would have had to say “well done, you played the game. Got me!!”. That’s what it’s all about, playing the game
Proper titles! Better use of the set! Coherent and sometimes better graphics! Better music! Better gameplay! Nick Hancock appears to have aged about 10 years since the last series ended!
Thought you might like some quiz ratings from yesterday…
The Chase: 2.85m (20.8%)*
University Challenge: 2.85m (11.9%)
Pointless: 2.34m (16.0%)
Eggheads: 1.46m (8.1%)
Deal or No Deal: 1.16m (12.0%)*
Breakaway: 1.10m (10.2%)
Only Connect: 0.94m (3.9%)
Countdown: 0.57m (7.7%)*
The Weakest Link: 0.22m (3.2%)
All ratings include HD, where appropriate.
* Not including +1
Very interesting, thanks Paul.
Thanks for that. Annoyingly, our official figure will probably turn out to be 0.99. Would be nice to break a million.
For the record, the consolidated rating – after timeshifters and 7-day catchup viewing – was 0.988 million. Close, but no cigar.
That Weakest Link rating is for a 2001 episode. For some reason they decided to repeat shows that far back in the series.
Just wait for the Footballers’ next outing!! We’ll get it!!
I’m still not 100% sure about the sound effects. The right answer sound seems strangely cut short and the wrong answer sound still has that weird monkey laugh at the end.
Nobody won anything today.
Has that ever happened before?
Yes, I’m pretty sure that happened at least once last series.
I wasn’t sure, to be honest. I thought we were the first team to not win anything and have to live with that shame and infamy 😀
Indeed, there was a team that failed to finish in the spring. In fact, it was the episode from which I took the shots in the Week’s review.
I found it great that it happened solely because they got greedy at the end and wanted that extra £300.
Oooh, I’ve just got around to watching Wednesday’s episode of Breakaway, and here’s question 21: “How many triple letter scores are on a traditional Scrabble board?” The contestants on the breakway track answer eight and are ruled correct.
Shenanigans! There are eight triple-word squares but twelve triple-letter squares… aren’t there? (Source.)
Another go for the unfairly-disadvantaged Messrs. Sullivan, Jeff and Rachel, I’d say, and I claim my Trainspotter’s Badge! (Comments like these are very tedious, yes, but I think this is the first time I have had the privilege…)
Great, complex, intriguing show, though the apparent ramping up of difficulty at the end is somewhat cheap, and very fine episode! Sorry it had to end that way…
Oof, that’s a terrible mistake. We had a version of that as an OC sequence last series (ending …TLS = 12, TWS = 8) so you’re definitely right.
I wasn’t 100% sure I should have challenged that Scrabble question at the time, but I know now that I should have done. The worst that could have happened is that it was an incorrect challenge, I think. I’ll give my views on it on Sunday with Lewis.
Thanks for watching it, all those that did
Would a polite but firmly-worded letter to Gogglebox Entertainment at this point be appropriate? To whom should it be addressed?
It would be fascinating to hear on what the “challenging an incorrect question” process is like, both for this show in particular and for shows in general. Answers involving “write to The Daily Mail” are sadly too reflective of modern life to be permitted.
I remember us being told in the green room before recording started that once it’s been recorded, you can’t do anything about it as the result has already been determined. Yeah, the game could have gone VERY differently if Simon and Jo had been penalised for giving the wrong answer to that question and it should really have been picked up on so why me or any of the others didn’t speak up about it is a mystery…
On yesterday’s (30/10/12) show when James (who’s been on a plethora of other things) broke away on Q25 he didn’t get asked whether he wanted to bring one of the other 2 remaining players with him – did they forget or was it edited out? A bit odd, either way!