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3 hours ago
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Appropriately enough, I suppose, what Chess Masters: The Endgame is doing in the television schedules is a bit of a puzzle. The Queen’s Gambit, the adaptation of Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel about a chess prodigy that became an unexpected hit for Netflix, made a star out of Anya Taylor-Joy and brought the game to wider public attention. But that was five years ago. The flurry of interest it roused in the subject has long since fallen back to normal levels. Chess Masters has no moment to capitalise on, except for what it assures us is “Britain’s booming chess community”, 12 of whose “rising stars” compete over eight episodes to, well, beat the other 11 at chess.
This has clearly presented the producers of the show with a number of problems, none of which has been successfully solved. There is the question of how you make an essentially silent, cerebral game telegenic and accessible. They have hired a presenter with glasses to acknowledge the intellectualism of the pursuit, but made it Sue Perkins to try to give warm, Bake Off vibes too. But it is still inescapably people frowning over an abstract strategy board game, not constructing model cities out of profiteroles or coaxing clouds of pistachio and rose-flavoured cakes out of the oven like culinary gods.
They have provided two sub-presenters – grandmaster and three-time British champion David Howell plus chess coach and former Traitors contestant Anthony Mathurin – to explain what is going on, but have then run scared of allowing them to do so. We get a hurried handful of descriptions of games’ pinch points in each episode (“Active back rank … strong centre … triple stack … sleeping pieces, retreating queens … and that’s a pin and win”) that are too fast for the ignorant (Hi!) to understand and too basic to be useful to anyone else (“That’s what’s known in chess as a blunder”). And Mathurin’s effortful enthusiasm for the camera is almost unwatchable.
The contestants have, as ever, been chosen with an eye primarily on their backstories. Like 56-year-old Nick, who discovered the salvatory properties of the game while in prison and now runs chess clubs in Charlton and Greenwich, to try to spread the word. And 46-year-old Navi, who picked up his previous hobby again when he was diagnosed with stage-four cancer (he is now in remission) and found it the perfect mental escape from the world of appointments and treatment. He and his children all play together now, which is all lovely, but doesn’t make things much more interesting to watch.
All the candidates have been lumbered with embarrassing nicknames. I presume this was a producer’s idea too, partly because not one sounds as if it has sprung up organically and partly because I simply cannot believe there are a dozen sentient adults in the world who prefer to be known in chess competitions as “The Unruly Knight” (34-year-old Cai – a classically trained actor, who says chess gives him discipline, though he apparently also thrives on “chaotic play”; God, you never know where you are with actors), “The Chess Princess” (26-year-old chess content creator Lula, who was actually inspired by The Queen’s Gambit to give the game a try) or “The Unrelenting Warrior” (Navi).
The first two episodes focus on the first six contestants as they go head-to-head in matches held in the ballroom of Cardiff’s former coal exchange, then compete to solve chess puzzles (set by Howell) in the fastest time possible. As he gravely inspects each board and the participants wait to hear the fateful words “Puzzle complete!” or “Puzzle incomplete!” it is all faintly reminiscent of the IT Crowd episode when Moss gets involved with “street Countdown” (“Gimme one of those sweet, sweet consonants”). The encroaching bathos is not helped by the insistence that winners ascend to the “balcony of dreams” (the ballroom’s balcony) while losers wait elsewhere for their chance to avoid elimination.
Chess Masters: The Endgame could have been gentle and charming if somebody involved had had some faith in the game, in the potential for people to be interested in explanations of its finer points, or allowed Perkins off the leash a bit to make more jokes – yes, even in the face of such a terribly serious game! Instead, it feels thin, tired and scared. Let’s have the courage of your convictions next time, people, and, if you have none, that’s absolutely fine. Just don’t bother at all.
