Article

Community

Culture

Film & TV

Fun & play

5 February 2025

5 min read

Here’s why strangers unite on The Chase

Chasing the prize isn't everything on the TV quiz show.

Stuart Haynes

Stuart is communications director for the Diocese of Liverpool.

Four quiz show contestants stand behind a table with the show host.

“I’ve had a great day Brad”. How quickly we fall into the staple clichés of daytime TV quiz shows. I tried to avoid hitting that trap, but my lips uttered that gem, as well as pushback phrases exhorting other contestants not to take a low offer, as I made my way through the lexicon of phrases to be uttered by a quiz show contestant.

Yes, I was on The Chase. A longstanding mainstay of ITV’s teatime schedule this popular quiz combines individual rounds, a multiple-choice battle against the Chaser of the day, in my case the one known as The Beast (in reality a nice guy). It all culminates in a team effort to score as many points as possible to set a target the Chaser cannot possibly beat. (another show cliché). All this presided over by the ever-genial Bradley Walsh makes it a bankable show in the schedules.

So why did I end up (nearly a year ago now) in Elstree studios with three people I had never met trying to win some cash? Well to be honest for me winning the cash was not the most important thing. My main aim was to not look a fool. My greatest fear was to get a low score in the first round inviting inevitable scorn and a trolling over my visibly clear lack of intellect or general knowledge. (To be clear as well, ITV prepare us for any potential abuse we might get, giving advice on protecting our social media and access to a helpline. I did feel protected).

Actually, another fear was getting a bible or religion question wrong. I avoided that.

If I met my first objective to not look stupid, my next aim was to get into the final round (otherwise my aunt would have done better than me and that would be disastrous for my poor little ego). But overall, it was the experience, it was the day out, it was chance to step outside of the daily routine that drew me to the long audition process and brought me on air.

I would love to say that as a Christian minister I did it for God. I didn’t. I considered whether to wear my clerical shirt rejecting that for, as a self-supporting minister, I have developed my own rule for wearing it; to signal I am in active ministry. I was open about my faith and had a nice chat with Brad about churches and churchgoing. But this was never going to be about converting folk through knowing facts about history or music.

And watchable television in the context of a daytime quiz is about telling a story. It’s almost a pantomime story we willingly enter involving heroes and villains.

But I learnt a great deal about life through this. First, the day was surreal. It started with the awkward meeting of us four contestants in a hotel lobby uncertain who was also a contestant until we were brought together by a show member. We were then welcomed into the Chase world, an experience well known to the team supporting us - they work on up to three shows a day, five days a week. With our electronic devices temporarily confiscated we were in a timeless environment effectively ceding control to the team who guided us carefully to the filming. This included preparing our minds and talking points so that we all have interesting stories to chat through with Brad.

And we start to bond as a small group. Diverse though we were we found shared interests, common bonds, and we grew from a collection of individuals to be a team with a common purpose slowly moving through stages of wardrobe and makeup towards the big moment of entering the studio. That bond extended to the crew looking after us who for that time were friends, supporters and guides leading us through what was to us was the exotic mystery of filming, but I am sure to them was just another day. Through them we learnt the etiquette, the time to talk, the direction to look, how to move and when we can relax and sip water from personalised Chase water bottles

We realised how each of us has different reasons for being there, different desires, different backgrounds and different approaches. But we are coming together with one purpose. To best the Chaser winning the panto styled quiz.

That bonding is important if we are to work together, to give each other advice and support. And I believe the nature of the show has changed over time. My memory was that when it was first aired contestants would be more in it for themselves and almost scorn those taking lower offers and diminishing from the overall prize pot. Now it is about team, it is about the knowledge that only together do we stand a chance of winning, only through mutual support will the cash by ours.

The filming is live but broken up so camera positions can be moved to get the shots needed. We were even interrupted by an incident that ended up in their blooper reel. Everyone, especially Bradley, is professional, kind, and friendly but it is clear they have a job to do and do well. So do it they must for their first duty is to produce watchable television.

And watchable television in the context of a daytime quiz is about telling a story. It’s almost a pantomime story we willingly enter involving heroes and villains. We four were the little people fighting a good and wholesome battle against an almighty foe. That foe was the Chaser, The Beast, scornful, patronising, goading and tempting us to mistake. But on our side is the ringmaster, Mr Bradley Walsh, our guide and mentor shepherding us through the emotional ups and downs of our journey to the final. The viewer is hopefully identifying with us having heard our stories rooting for us to win the day.

So, it’s not about quizzing, it’s a story of uniting, belonging, competing while being welcomed into a world that has its own rules and rituals that needs someone to guide the new person through.

We had a great day, we finished our time and were back out onto the street parting company and leaving, as we began, as strangers.

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Review

Ambition

Culture

Film & TV

Politics

6 December 2024

6 min read

Why we’re fascinated with power behind closed doors

Conclave captures the powerful chemistry between heaven and earth.

Roger Standing

Roger is a theologian and author with a particular interest in the relationship between faith and culture.

A cardinal glances to the side as he stands amid a gather of clergy,

Cardinal Thomas Lawrence played by Ralph Fiennes.

Film Nation.

An ecclesiastical election, conducted behind closed doors, by a group of old men hardly seems a subject for a riveting thriller. Yet, back in 2016, Berkshire-based novelist Robert Harris thought otherwise. Conclave became an international best-seller.

Now it’s been turned into a movie. And, according to the cognoscenti, a rather good one at that. British Vogue lauded it with great enthusiasm:

“It’s a treat in every sense – visually, sonically, dramaturgically – and, as we hurtle into this bleakest of winters, exactly the kind of galvanising, pulse-racing shot in the arm we all need.”

Really?

Well, following its UK premiere at the London Film Festival in October, the BBC were quick to report a potential flurry of Oscar nominations and even that it was ‘thought to be a strong contender for the best picture award’.

So, what’s going on? How has this dangerously dull and turgid subject turned into a narrative that tames the critics and converts the sceptics?

A late night showing on the day of its release at the end of November beckoned me to find out. So off I went with my wife, after she had finished Gospel Choir practice.

Directed by award winning film-maker Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front), it stars Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini.

The premise is simple. The Pope is dead, and the Cardinals of the Catholic Church convene from around the world to choose his successor. But this, of course, is only the beginning.

Sequestered in the Vatican the prelates are cut off from outside influence as the secret process of electing a new pontiff is enacted. But this does not stop events, past and present, from impacting and shaping their deliberations.

Overseen by Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Fiennes), the British Dean of the College of Cardinals, the story unfolds as he negotiates these successive revelations and happenings. Along the way he is also wrestling in his own faith for spiritual reality and personal integrity.

As they gather, the not-so-friendly fraternal rivalry of the cardinals and the manoeuvring of the leading contenders sets up a presenting series of tensions for the Conclave:

Cardinal Bellini (Tucci) is the Vatican’s theologically progressive, yet diffident, Secretary of State
Cardinal Tremblay (Lithgow) is a slippery and ambitious, self-promoting Canadian conservative
Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) is the forthright and reactionary traditionalist Patriarch of Venice
Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) is a theologically conservative and populist Nigerian who offers the possibility of making history as the first Black pope.

Then, at the last minute, into the mix enters a cardinal that no one knew of. Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) is a Mexican who arrives claiming the late pope appointed him Archbishop of Kabul in pectore (in secret) prior to his death.

Shuttling between their living quarters in the Domus Sanctae Marthae and the Sistine Chapel, the venue for their voting process, the story unfolds. A complex interplay of ecclesiastical politics, theology and spirituality intermingle with issues of identity, character and choice to make for a heady mix. At stake, or is that on offer, is the power of the Papacy.

Reflecting the church at large the Conclave is a community of conservatives and liberals, traditionalists and progressives, populists and academics, activists and administrators.

Like the world at large, all human life is here. Men with hidden secrets, driven by ignoble motives that often dress themselves in more noble apparel. Ambition, greed, ego and privilege rub shoulders with graciousness, sincerity and self-sacrificial service. Sometimes even in the same person. The human condition is a complicated one. It seems that power retains its age-old allure and ability to corrupt.

And maybe that’s it. For all the secrecy and mystery that surrounds a papal election, right down to the colour of the smoke, it is a human concoction. Human fingerprints are all over it, just like they are all over the church.

The church aspires to be better. To be shaped by a higher ideal. To properly be ‘the body of Christ’ and represent the imago dei in the world. To so inhabit the love and grace of God that through its life and witness God might touch and transform the world for the better. Yet, as one of the Italian cardinals correctly, if too easily, argues, “We are mortal men; we serve an ideal. We cannot always be ideal.”

Indeed, the great apostle St. Paul had to confess, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect …”, but he is committed to go further, “… [yet] I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” There is an ideal to pursue.

As the cardinals progress through successive rounds of voting the field of candidates narrows and the required two-thirds majority comes within reach. Yet the prospects of the main characters rise and fall through the twists and turns of the plot as it heads to its inevitable climax.

Then one final, unexpected and flabbergasting reveal hits the audience from out of left field. It is a masterful denouement to the tale.

Speaking about how it all came together Harris revealed:

“I approached this not as a Catholic and not as an expert in the Church. So my preparation began by reading the gospels, which are revolutionary. And the contrast between that and this great edifice of ritual and pomp and power and wealth of the Church is striking … There's also this question of can you freeze anything at a point nearly 2000 years ago? Haven't the world and humanity evolved?”

As we drove home at gone midnight I found it hard to disagree with Vogue.

The visual spectacle created by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine plays wonderfully with the renaissance setting of the Vatican. It is a beautiful and luscious feast for the eyes.

Volker Bertelmann’s teasing creativity with the score made the drama come alive and heightened what has been an unforgettable experience.

But for me, most of all, it was the drama. The story that was told. The unfolding of events and the interplay with people and their motives, their relationships and their vested interests. It is layered and nuanced and complex, just like real life.

It has left me pondering once again the chemistry between heaven and earth. Between our freewill and agency as individuals and the mystery of the divine presence and the fruit of prayer.

As the cardinals prepare for the final vote a waft of air blows gently through a broken window in the Sistine Chapel and rustles their voting papers. Is Berger tipping his hat to the presence of the Spirit of God, present and active in human affairs?

Perhaps the last word should go to Robert Harris.

“With temporal power, or indeed spiritual power, it is very difficult to avoid factions, scheming, the lesser of two evils—all the compromises that go into running any huge organization and trying to keep, not just hundreds, but thousands of people onside … I have a lot of time for politicians, just as I have a lot of time for these cardinals, because they are grappling with almost insoluble problems. But someone has to do it. Someone has to run a society. And I've tried to write about them with a degree of sympathy.”