Thrill of The Chase
As the quiz show that pits everyday people against the super brains celebrates one year on Australian TV, host Andrew O’Keefe tells Danielle McGrane why it’s been a success.
Congratulations on reaching a year with The Chase, but is it true you weren’t sure it would work? I wasn’t a devotee of the English version so it didn’t really strike me how strong the format was. I guess I wrote it off as just another quiz show but the more I came to play it, the more I realised how ingenious the format was. It’s got all these lovely shifts of pace and tone, and it’s got all the gorgeous personalities of the chasers built into it.
What is the show’s appeal? It doesn’t matter who wins or loses. It’s a great thrill to see challengers take down chasers. Everybody loves a victory for the everyman and woman but it’s just as great a thrill to see the extraordinary intellect of the chasers on display, so when they win, people respect that. There’s never any sense of disappointment in this show because – as twee as this sounds – the winner every day is knowledge.
What makes a good chaser? What are the qualities they need? Well, of course, they have to be incredibly competitive, but there also has to be an element of insouciance about them – they have to pretend they don’t care. That’s the real attraction of chasers, the confidence to know they can slay all before them combined with those moments of vulnerability when that comes into question.
You must get invited to run a lot of trivia nights since you started this? I certainly do. If one more Catholic school appeals to my Catholic upbringing to rubber-arm me into hosting the trivia night, I may just have to move to Fiji where they have Mormons and Methodists.
But everyone deep down inside has a bit of the trivia nerd in them. The running of the trivia night has given me a great appreciation for getting the whole thing moving while keeping all of the egos in check. It’s a combination of traffic warden and psychologist, the role of trivia host.
Who is the scariest chaser? I think people are most intimidated by The Beast [Mark Labbett]. They think he’s pretty fearsome. I think people have a very soft spot for Issa [Schultz].
Is hosting this very different to your work on Deal or No Deal? Definitely. Deal I loved … It was about putting on a wacky show for the wacky funsters who came along and throwing scraps of fairy floss to the 150 screaming maniacs who surrounded us as we played every day.
I find this show appeals to a slightly different side. It is more challenging but I’m also surprised by how much fun we manage to get out of it.