Who Dares Wins: Mega List
Those will remember a fortnight ago I showed how Who Dares Wins champions, Nat & Euan secure their seventh win and winning £155,000 in total, the second highest win on the show. They returned last week to face their eighth set of challengers, Abby and Gareth. The challengers won the first list by naming Sylvester Stallone films and needed to win the next list to become the new champions and knock Nat & Euan off their throne. What you will see in the clip below is something that has never been achived in any version of The Rich List in the world. Many lenghty lists contestants have tackled are usually in the low 20s but given the topic of the list has over 100 names and being under pressure in the studio. What you will see takes it to another level.
Unfortunately, Nat & Euan lost the match on the sudden death list (Question of Sport team captains), with Abby and Gareth becoming the new champions. Although they didn’t manage to match the record of wins (eight), they still left the show with £155,000 between them. The final episode of the fourth series aired last night, securing 4.87 million in total viewers and an audience share of 23.4% making it at least 1 in 5 people at 8-9pm were watching BBC One. It also beat the entire line up over on ITV where they wheeled out a new Saturday night schedule with Odd One In, Penn & Teller: Fool Us and The Marriage Ref.
Video courtesy 12Yard and BBC
May as well take the opportunity to post a comment on BuzzerBlog for the first time.
I honestly thought justice was not served when Nat and Euan lost their crown – not just because they could name so many chemical elements without any hesitation, but also because I thought that Abby was immensely dislikeable.
Alas, she and Gareth just had to come up with some fantastic guesses on the QoS team captains – leaving N & E with pretty much nowhere to go…
Anyone remember Tom Lehrer?
He can do over 100 elements in about a minute:
http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html
and that is exactly what I was expecting to see, so disappointing that with two scientists, neither one could do that.
Saying that me and Abby were scientists was overstating it somewhat; I think she’s a trainee doctor and I was a receptionist who happened to have a B in A Level Chemistry at the time of recording.
Nat:
Nevertheless, congratulations.
Just out of curiosity—how high would they have had to go to get you to pass?
Hmmm, maybe around 65? I don’t know anywhere near all the elements but I do know a fair few. I would have really hated to pass up on the list though, I was really ready to fight!
Watching that clip just make me say shame on GSN for not brining back “The Money List”. I hope someday that show can be picked up by a network and done just like they do it in the UK.
I would have laughed my ass off if they started the list “There’s Antimony Arsenic Aluminum Selenium…”
And therefore you’d have failed on the third answer…
…I fail to see how they would fail on the third answer. Aluminum is, as far as I know, an element.
I think David B is referring to the fact that “aluminum” (4 syllables, one ‘I’) is considered an alternative name in Britain while the formal British name is “aluminium” (5 syllables, two I’s), as opposed to the US standard being the other way around.
In any case, I’ve often said that using academic subjects as opposed to pop culture makes for more interesting quiz shows, because difficult academic material is much more likely to be something the contestants will vaguely remember being mentioned in class but may not fully remember. This is great evidence of that. Obviously very few people will know the entire periodic table by heart, but most should know quite a few. You don’t get this kind of bidding nearly as often with pop culture categories, because often one team won’t be very confident and quickly tell the other team to name them.
American writers, are you paying attention here? Anyone? Bueller?
Aluminium is the official name for element 13, but aluminum is an officially accepted variant spelling.
Yes, and only after weaseling out of ‘the standard’ agreed by IUPAC. And yet British schools now have to endure the travesty that is ‘sulfur’.
Hey, you won two (aluminium and caesium); two out of three (sulfur) ain’t bad. :-)
Thanks for posting the conclusion to the Nat and Euan story. It’s too bad it ended, especially since their effort on the element list was quite impressive, albeit further evidence why the show did not catch on in the US.
I think the only problem with the show is that there’s no grace period. If you give a single incorrect answer, you’ve lost the entire list. It might have worked better in the U.S. if there were some Helps available to assist the playing team with completing a list. Plus, it would also help if they would display all of the answers you have listed thus far on the board, instead of making you guess which ones you already said and which ones you haven’t.
To all those still wondering why our (US) version failed, the answer is arrogant execs at Fox and GSN.
This show had potential, but instead both version have been placed in the hands of executives who took this show for granted. Shame on both Fox and GSN for that.
Call me crazy, but this program needs to be revived yet again. This time, NBC in the US should pick it up b.c it can get the network back on the map. Anybody know the address of NBC, so I could request this program to the network.
When I see this clip , I can NEVER get over why the F— GSN wanted to put the newer episodes on Saturday Nights? Whose crazy idea was it? I want to work for NBC so that I can pick up this show AND the Million Dollar Money Drop, which Fox cancelled a month ago. Are there any jobs open at NBC?