Despite being one of the world’s oldest games, chess is far from being forgotten. From 2020’s The Queen’s Gambit spiking sales of chess boards and books, to the chess.com app being the most downloaded in February 2023, new players across the globe continue to find love for the 1500-year-old game.
Now Chess Masters will bring together 12 amateur players from across the UK to compete in heats and knock-out rounds.
With British celebs such as Ekin-Su and John Bercow heading across the pond for The Traitors US, it’s no surprise that the BBC has chosen to commission a celebrity series for the UK.
It doesn’t matter where we are in our career, we never stop networking. I was with a colleague at the RTS Programme Awards in March. As we watched Charlotte Moore presenting the Outstanding Achievement Award to Stephen Lambert, we mused how, irrespective of Studio Lambert’s run of successes with shows such as The Traitors, Squid Game: The Challenge and Boarders, even someone at that level is still probably having conversations about the next commission or series they’re working on.
The Traitors: The Movie will star Suranne Jones (Vigil) as presenter Claudia Winkleman, Sally Phillips (Bridget Jones’s Baby) as contestant Diane and Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton) as Harry. Expect to see all the iconic moments from the series, from Ross’s winking, Harry’s scheming and Diane’s murder.
First up with advice at the late-January session was trainee Miriam Sumeray, who said: “As a trainee, the thing that’s going to set you apart is your soft skills more than your practical skills.” She added that being “personable and organised” were key.
Sumeray recommended using the ScreenSkills Trainee Finder scheme, which had helped her land her first jobs in the industry.
The game show is now set to return to ITV1 and ITVX, along with four celebrity specials.
The show is produced by Remarkable Entertainment, a Banijay UK company, and sees contestants try to win a cash prize as they test their luck against the devious Banker.
From panto villainy to Jazatha Christie, high camp funerals to heart-breaking betrayals: most shows can only hope to have one, maybe two moments of the year, but series two served up several.
Here's our top ten.
Could they not just go backpacking around South East Asia instead of backstabbing around the Scottish Highlands? Perhaps, but their loss of marbles is our gloriously watchable gain. I guess there is the £120,000 up for grabs.
As we saw in the first series, no matter a contestant's intuition or intellect, the game will always follow a course as wildly unpredictable as humans are irrational.
But we've still scoured their profiles to discern who might make good Faithful or Traitor material. So read on for some mission statements that will no doubt prove ludicrously bold.
