Yes, that is indeed David Tennant presenting an ITV game show. David Tennant, star of Doctor Who and Broadchurch. David Tennant, who has played Hamlet and Macbeth, now fronting a British reboot of a South Korean series where contestants “with exceptional qualities” play a series of games requiring “intelligence, lateral thinking, and the power of persuasion”.
If this implies a sort of hybrid of The Chase, Crystal Maze and The Traitors, don’t get your hopes up. Genius Game is more of a televised workplace away day that you wish you’d been able to get out of.
On a gaudy, gold, heavily hexagon-themed set, we meet 11 players and are given vague outlines as to their smarty-pants credentials by the assignment of silly nicknames that are never mentioned again. Benjamin, a university lecturer, is “The Professor”. Charlotte, a PhD student, is “The Chemist”. Bex, a self-made businesswoman, is “The Entrepreneur”. But the programme doesn’t actually bother to introduce everyone, meaning we get under way without knowing half of their names.
While explaining the game, Tennant reassures viewers: “Don’t worry – all will become clear when you see these clever people play.” This is not true. We aren’t even told what all this game-playing is in aid of: nowhere in the first episode is the apparent cash prize actually mentioned.
What we do know is that each episode, a group game called the “Main Match” will require teamwork and tactics to avoid entering an eliminator called the “Death Match”, which will send someone home.
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Read MoreThe first task is a game of logic called “Gold Heist”, in which the players must steal loot from imaginary “vaults” of their choice. If too many of them go for the same vault, they end up in “jail” and frozen out of the game. If someone successfully “tips off” another person’s heist, that person will also end up in jail.
None of this matters. This game will never be played again, so there’s no point in learning the rules. It is is also incredibly boring. No matter how many times someone excitedly whispers “strategy”, this entirely hypothetical and convoluted puzzle is not a visual spectacle. Nor, it should be said, is the programme’s set, which reveals itself to have a honeycomb of horribly decorated breakout rooms that only add to the sense of the whole thing being a team-building exercise.
Because none of the players really understand what’s going on, the gameplay mainly involves people wandering around with a pen and paper and doing absolutely nothing. The game plays out with zero tension despite attempts at a storyline: Paul – “The Businessman” – really doesn’t understand the game and his “nothing’s personal” attitude makes him a target for one half of the group, who mastermind his downfall.
While the players seem invested (good for them), we are not. Genius Game is the TV equivalent of watching some people you don’t know play a game you don’t understand all the while telling you what a great time they’re having. The climax ought to be the “Death Match”, but the best the programme can muster is a muted picture-matching game that amounts to an 11-plus non-verbal reasoning test.
The only real puzzle worth solving is what on earth Tennant is doing here. Presumably he wanted to get in on that sweet Winkleman national treasure territory, but he’s almost admirably uncommitted – only appearing in pre-recorded video segments that add to the sterility of the whole thing.
Genius Game is overly complicated and tackily staged, the genius move here is to find something else to watch.
‘Genius Game’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on Channel 4
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