Hurrah! It’s the return of last year’s most irrelevant new prime time quiz format 500 Questions on ABC in the US, this time round featuring a new host in Dan Harris (bad luck Richard Quest), an apparently streamlined quicker format (30 question rounds, five second answering time) and tonight Ken Jennings opens the series in an exciting piece of stunt casting. And he’ll be there for all five episodes if he has any hope of getting to 500 questions, I imagine.
If you live outside the US you will need to use some dark arts to watch it.
A UK version with Giles Coren has been filmed and will air later in the year on ITV.
Well if you like stodge you’re well catered for with the new series as that’s basically what it is.
Dan Harris is actually a pretty natural host.
I think they’ve upped the amount of battle questions in a bid to give the challenger more agency, but they still feel like a fifth wheel half the time.
I can’t believe Ken Jennings didn’t know that eclairs are made from choux pastry.
Dull. As. Dishwater.
New host seems good enough, Richard Quest was a little irritating in series 1. Would have been nice if they gave the challenger a bit more influence in the game still. It would be a nightmare from a question writing point of view but how about if rather that picking the category on two strikes, the challenger picks the category after one strike and then every two strikes question is a battle picked by the main player, so every elimination will be the old player being beaten by the challenger, but a slight edge given to the contestant in terms of picking their stronger category.
If the UK version is paced like this then I really can’t see it being a success but then again, I’m surprised to see it get a second run in the US. The objective of 500 questions seems unattainable and even if it did, it is hard to not be frustrated by the pace of almost a question a minute, if that.
I said this ages ago, but I do think you’d solve a lot of the issues with 500 Questions, and modify viewer expectations, if it wasn’t titled 500 Questions.
It wasn’t all bad. I still like the questions, and it felt like the challenger was in the game a bit more. The reduction of the timer from 10 to 5 seconds didn’t hurt it as much as I’d feared. The speed round was meh, and the set’s still too dark. The new host is slicker but I liked Quest’s quirkiness. But there’s a lot of streamlining that was good. I’m particularly glad that things like Triple Treat have gone.
If it were me, if the player doesn’t get the right answer but the challenger DOES, then the challenger picks the next question topic. Always, not just the 3rd wrong. At the minute, it feels insignificant to ask the challenger if they knew the answer.
Oh I quite like that idea, gives them more of a point of them being there.
But then it might become TOO HARD and it’s already the world’s TOUGHEST quiz.
If the intention was to speed the game up by reducing the clock then much as I predicted it hasn’t.
I’m getting increasingly irritated by how the Battle questions break the flow.
Also it’s silly that they still come up at the end of the round when the challenger has no way of knocking them out.
Off topic, and simply because me and my wife have just nearly choked to death through laughing at it…surely the finest gameshow format ever, in the first ninety seconds before the credits… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcXwf5RXgDE
Ooh, thanks – that’s scratched an itch. I’ve corrected my half-remembered title on the UKGameshows “Game Show Spoofs” article.
This has been pretty consistent throughout the run, 0.8/9 in the demo and 4-5m total viewership, apart from an expected drop on Saturday night.
Not as “good” as last time but it might have done well enough to fill time again next year.