Beat the Brain

Beat the Brain is a British television quiz show that began airing on BBC Two on 11 May 2015 and is scheduled to run for 30 episodes. It is presented by John Craven with Josie Lawrence as the voice of "The Brain".

Gameplay

The show begins with the contestants introducing themselves in the same way as they would do on Eggheads (Hi, I'm X and I'm a Y) but instead of the team captain introducing themselves first, they leave themselves until last. In addition, there are only four contestants, whereas on Eggheads there are five.

Each contestant plays one subject. There are six subjects; Logic, Memory, Orientation, Language, Observation and Multi-tasking. The Brain selects one subject, and one player is selected by the team to play; (s)he sits next to host john craven. Each subject contains two games, each containing three questions each, in which three seconds can be won. This means a total of nine seconds can be won per game, eighteen per player. When this contestant has played, they move back to next to their teammates and another contestant is selected. This process repeats itself until all the contestants have played. Seventy two seconds are up for grabs throughout the game.

In the endgame, the number of seconds won in the main game are added to two mints. For example, if the team have answered nineteen questions correctly, fifty seven seconds is added to make a total of 2 minutes 57 seconds. The team must give eight correct answers - two from each player - to win the jackpot of 3,000 thousand pounds; each contestant must give two correct answers for The Brain to move on to the next contestant. When the clock dips below two minutes, each second expired loses £25. The games here are only the games used in the main game.

Critical reception

Critical reception for the show was mixed; Ian Wolf of OnTheBox.com described it as "perfectly enjoyable" but at the same time lamented the asininity of the questions being posed by The Brain, further berating its low prize fund of just £750 per person. He also commended the fact that "just about anyone can have a go. Whether you know all the prime ministers or the elements of the periodic table is irrelevant. It is all about mental ability, short-term memory, basic arithmetic, spelling and so forth". On the other hand, Christopher Stevens of the Daily Mail was more negative, commenting that "the show still needs a bit of work" and that its graphics resembled that of "one of Alan Sugar's old Amstrad PCs", further berating the show's "childishly easy" challenges. He summed up by saying that "the show has potential, but its computer brain just wasn't clever enough. It was obviously a mistake to use an Amstrad".