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The 1% Club is apparently the top-most percentile for all the brainboxes out there, so who’s in it?
Well, before I explain the game, the first question asked – just to give a flavour of what’s to come – is: What popular man’s name can go before the following to make new words?
- …K
…CH
…WAY
I guessed Lee… before realising that’s his name, even though I knew that, but I didn’t make the correlation straight away.
There’s a very large audience of 100 people in a circle, and Lee Mack declares…
- “We asked a cross-section of people from all over Britain a list of our unique questions. Based on their answers, we can tell statistically what percentage of the country should get each one right.
Tonight, I’ll be asking those exact questions to our 100 contestants, beginning with the easier one that 90% of Britain got right, and ending with the most challenging question that only 1% of the public answered correctly.
At the start of the show, every contestant is given £1,000, but if they get any question wrong, they are out of the game, and the £1000 is transferred to the 1% prize pot.
Whoever gets the furthest in the quiz wins £10,000 and the chance to answer the final 1% question, to win everything in the prize pot, and take home up to £100,000.”
With rules like these, it’s easier just to quote him direct, rather than paraphrase it.
So, Mr Mack asks a question that 90% of people got right, and this is the only real question I’ll detail here, but he asks which picture can’t be right: two of them have a tiger or gorilla in the jungle, while a polar bear is shown on a desert island. You figure out which it is.
And then down to the 80% question, and so on, until you get to 30%, then it’s 25%, 20%, 10%, 5% and then 1%. Along the way, there’ll be options to leave the show with the initial £1,000, as well as using it to pass on a question, but still stay in the game in the hope you’ll be the last man (or woman) standing.
Lee Mack is a good host for this, as he can react quickly to whatever anyone in the audience says. I still don’t *get* Not Going Out, but it’s a shame that the BBC never recommissioned Semi-Detached, as that was great. Perhaps a typical Lee Mack audience just doesn’t understand sitcoms without canned laughter?
As an aside, this programme has a 2021 copyright date, so it’s been in the can for a little while.
Overall, The 1% Club passes an hour quite reasonably, but one episode will be enough for me.
Oh, and how did I do? I think I would’ve passed towards the end of the questions, and I might not quite have made it through to the final round, but it would’ve been close.
And obviously, there’s no spoilers in this review as to how things turn out. Apart from that at the end… it has end credits. Ha! GOTCHA!
The 1% Club begins on ITV on Saturday April 9th at 8.30pm. After broadcast, each episode will be on the ITV Hub. It’s unlikely to ever be released on Blu-ray or DVD.
Directors: Richard Van’t Riet, Toby Baker
Creators: Dean Nabarro, Andy Auerbach
Writers: Dom English, Neil Webster
Music: Twin Petes
Presenter: Lee Mack
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.