r/thechase

I think he's actually one of the funnier more entertaining chasers which I guess is more important to the show but his skills are definitely deteriorating. Whether anyone actually cares or I'm just a pedant I don't know but if I was ever on the show I'd be praying he was the one who walked out.

Hello all you Chase Australia Fans!

I love your version of the show, it's the one that imitates the UK version closest imo, and the cast of chasers are all fab, some of them have also done really well for themselves on the show and have caught some fantastic targets! but, I've lurked a bit on some comments here and there (here being reddit, there being youtube). and I feel like anytime Mara is mentioned, everyone seems to be routing for her to be booted from the show, saying she's weak as a chaser, and other things like they don't know how she got onto the show in the first place, I wanted to deep dive the statistics recently to see how bad she actually was, so I decided to take that upon myself, I never thought she was bad as a chaser, but what I found shocked me a bit...

First, there are 3 people I've decided to choose to look at in this breakdown, Mara Lejins herself being the Subject, David Poltorak, as the newest permanent fixture on the show, one who also came about similarly to Mara herself, and the last 63 episodes of Cheryl Toh, someone who is considered to be a good chaser by fans, and one who has acheived impressive catches (Clean Sweep 21, a couple good 20's, including one that ended at 26 seconds, which gave her about another 5 questions to work with, granted I don't know the accuracy stat of this episode, so if someone has it, I would not mind a download link.)

anyway, to start of the breakdown, Mara herself has:

Played 63 Games with an average target of 13.09

Won 50 of those games

Lost 13 of them

This gives her a win rate of 79%, equitable to both Jenny and Anne on the British Version, and higher than 4 of the other chasers.

To compare this, I'll show the Last 63 Episodes of Cheryl Toh, she:
Played 63 Games (obviously) with an average target of 15.61

She won 40

Lost 23

and has a win rate of 63.5%, albeit her average targets were higher, so to compare the 25 most recent games between both of them (where Cheryl's average target is 14.4, and Mara's is 12.63)

Cheryl's win rate is 68%

Mara's is 76%

I feel that despite the 2 point difference, it's fair to say that Mara and Cheryl are at least on equal footing perfomance wise, now I'll throw in another chaser into the mix, one I've seen be shat on less than Mara, but still only by a little bit, David Poltorak has:

Played 33 Games with an average target of 12.62

Won 21

Lost 12

and has a win rate of 63.63%, which is a lot worse than Mara considering that he faces lower averages than she does, although I still respect him as he both smashed them on BtCAU, and has had a couple good chases, I think considering the fact he's around 72 years old, he's going to be a bit slower than the others, but probably struggles with knowing newer things, then again I could be entirely wrong, one thing still stands that's applicable to all 3 of them though, they're highly trained professionals that are all very good at their jobs.

Did anyone notice they aired the tcatw switzerland and said zurich was the capital? We mailed them and then they changed it haha

The Beast: I actually recognised Mark Labbett for originally being on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Even though he is Welsh, he has an English accent but maybe he grew up in Wales younger maybe. Me and mum saw him on Celebs Go Dating where he starting drinking a candle. You can tell he's lost a lot of weight. On The Chase, he can be a sore loser but he has mellowed down over the years.

The Dark Destroyer: He has a very dry sense of humour that you can't help but love. Like him reading the top offer twice when announcing it or his infamous one question shootout line. Apparently, he is the only chaser who will speak to the contestants after the show has finished filming. I met him in Leyland. I find his general knowledge to be that he tends to get really obscure facts like 0.01% of people will know correctly but then he'll get really easy ones wrong. He does tend to have more gaps than a few other chasers.

The Governess: She's a fellow candidate with autism along with myself, which is unsurprisingly part of how she's 3rd best female quizzer on the planet. I felt sorry for her in I'm A Celeb as it really showed a more vulnerable side to her. My mum thinks she's the cleverest but she's a bit of a dark horse to me.

The Sinnerman: I saw him in Leyland on Easter this year and we saw him having a wee (luckily not out of the wrong end lol). I bet many people wouldn't have that as their claim to fame 🤣. My mum likes him as he likes Prince. He looks completely different in casual clothing than he does on Chase. He has a smooth way of talking and he's very nice.

The Vixen: She used to do my heading a lot but I've warmed to her more now. She's got a great singing voice. She also looks completely different when she's not doing The Chase. I think she's lethally clever, she is very sharp in her tactics. She's the best one for giving advice to players in terms of what offers to go for and feedback on the final Chase.

The Menace: Obviously the newbie and former contestant. He just now fits in as a regular Chaser to me. He is quite monotone but he's really nice. He's also good at giving advice to players. He does tend to lose final chases a lot. He also supports Liverpool which is a bonus. I don't think anyone can get over his 80s hair do.

I noticed two in last night's episode, the misspelling of Liechtenstein and Question 1 being labeled as Question 2 in Round 6. Has anyone else noticed anymore?

Okay… that was interesting. To be honest, I did predict that one team would get eliminated in this episode and we would have a 3 team final so I have changed my name from DiamondTheSavage to DiamondThePsychic. Nah, just kidding. Also, I feel kinda bad for criticising the early episodes for not giving the chasers much screen time outside the iPad scenes because in this episode Anne and Shaun didn’t do any sneaking about, which was a shame. I love it when you could be watching a kind of tense scene and then you just see one of the chasers peeking around the corner. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. It adds some lighthearted humour in what’s otherwise quite a tense show. What I will say though is that I understand that Switzerland is a cold country and assuming they were filming this in winter / spring earlier this year, then it’s bound to be cold, and if they just didn’t do it this episode because it was cold (and Anne and Shaun are well into their 60s so maybe they didn’t want them sneaking around in the interests of safety), then I’ll cut them a bit of slack. Surprisingly though, the lack of screentime for the chasers wasn’t bad in this episode (as in I didn’t necessarily mind as much) since there were a lot of plot twists (before the teams got to the end, the team I thought would have came first didn’t) and so my initial prediction of who was going to be 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc were wrong.

Overall I’ve genuinely enjoyed TCATW. It’s a breath of fresh air for the show. I think the new formula where you don’t find out the answer until you get to a certain attraction is genius and I love the way that the different shots of the cast towards the end make you question who‘s going to be first or last. And I think if the show does well enough, I would LOVE to see a Season 2!

As for the final next week (based on the preview that we got at the end of Episode 5), I wonder if and how the layout of the episode is going to change compared to the last 5, because obviously we have 3 pairs (6 contestants overall) and 6 chasers. Maybe the team that get there first will be the ones to take on the chasers. Who knows. Looking forward to next week!

Okay so episode 4 of The Chase Around The World really exceeded my expectations. I really enjoyed the fact that the chasers got some more screentime and made a few small comments that added comedic value (this is something that I’d critiqued the lack of in the first few episodes) and that final was truly tense. I want to keep this as spoiler free as possible so all I want to say about the final is that the team that ended up facing the chasers did really well and I was genuinely surprised by the outcome. I’m looking forward to next week’s episode!

The series started with 6 pairs. If 1 pair got eliminated each week, that would leave just 1 pair left for the final city in week 6. Which I'm sure isn't what ITV were planning on, but it is a possibility.

What do you think might happen in this scenario? Would the final be in week 5 with 2 pairs rather than week 6?