Chess Masters: The Endgame, review: quietly compelling and full of chequered charm
Could the BBC succeed in making chess sexy? Not quite but they did make it pretty darned exciting. Chess Masters: The Endgame (BBC Two) attempted to exploit the game's popularity boom by turning it into TV entertainment. The result was quietly compelling and full of chequered charm.
Recent years have seen a resurgence in a pursuit traditionally associated with bespectacled boffins in church halls. Schoolchildren found solace in chess during lockdown. Cheating scandals hit headlines. A sheen of showbiz glamour was added by Netflix drama The Queen's Gambit. Lending itself to online streams and mobile apps, chess has become an unlikely e-sport.
TV execs have clearly taken note. This cleverly formatted contest followed '12 rising stars of the UK's booming chess community' (everything's a 'community' nowadays, isn't it?) as they battled it out in tense head-to-heads and tackled fiendish puzzles in their bid to be crowned champion.
Expert commentary came from British grandmaster David Howell. Enthusiastic and engaging, he did an excellent job of explaining moves to relative beginners without patronising more experienced players. Howell could prove this promising show's main weapon. He was joined by chess coach Anthony Mathurin to analyse the motives behind the moves. When he appeared on The Traitors last year, Mathurin was banished before the midway mark. Presumably, he's better with rooks than Round Tables.
Host Sue Perkins lent a dash of Radio 4 wit and a whiff of The Great British Chess Off. As always, she couldn't resist an innuendo, telling players: 'Your time starts when David whips out his bishop and pops it on the board.' Positively pawn-ographic.
To counteract the game's geeky image, producers ramped up the theatrics. Chess was billed as 'the king of games' and 'war on a board'. Players were given gladiatorial nicknames such as 'Killer Queen' and 'Smiling Assassin'. One suspects these were coined by the programme makers, then reverse-engineered to fit the players, but let's not quibble. This was chess on TV for the first time since retro classics Play Chess and The Master Game.
Players' personal stories provided human interest. We heard how ex-bouncer Nick, a self-styled 'big buff black guy', took up chess while serving jail time. The game enabled father-of-three Navi to connect with his children during his treatment for stage four cancer. All the female players – they weren't just plentiful, they were also the best – fondly recalled being taught to play by their fathers.
This was a beguiling world of pinning and winning, castling and passing, laying traps and toppling kings. Tactical blunders were made. Checkmates followed. It was refreshing to watch a competition which rewarded strategic smart thinking, rather than backstabbing, attention-seeking or Spandex-clad physical feats.
Matches were edited down to a few highlights, which might not please purists, but can be watched in full on iPlayer. Rapid-cut coverage kept the running time down to a snappy half-hour and the momentum high. Slo-mo replays and moody music hammed up the action. The atmospheric setting of Cardiff's Coal Exchange added a splash of Victorian splendour.
Chess currently lays claim to be the world's fastest-growing sport, with six million Britons now playing regularly. This was squarely aimed at the new generation and about as dramatic as two brainboxes frowning at a board could be. TV shouldn't always have to shout to be heard and this was quietly thrilling.
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