Ross Kemp has lived many lives in public. He has been a soap opera psychopath, a war zone travelogue presenter and, most recently, someone who uses social media to show the world how veiny and purple his head can get during international sporting events. But Kemp is a restless spirit, always in search of the next adrenaline-filled adventure. And that is why, from today, Kemp has found his fourth age. That’s right, Ross Kemp is now a daytime quizshow presenter.
Wonderfully, the quizshow he hosts has the most aggressively Kempish title possible: Bridge of Lies. Isn’t that evocative? Doesn’t it sound tense and exciting? Doesn’t it sound like it could, feasibly, be the name of a high-stakes cold war-era repatriation operation?
Obviously, it isn’t any of those things. In reality, you could best describe Bridge of Lies as a kind of true or false hopscotch. But Bridge of Lies, eh? Cor.
Now, there is a chance that you will tune in, as I did, because you want to see the distance between the comfortable, chummy primary coloured tonality of the daytime quizshow genre and Ross Kemp, a man who most recently went viral for screaming naked in front of some sunflowers . If that’s the case, at first, you will not be disappointed.
Within the first few minutes of the first episode, Kemp finds himself confronted by a gaggle of daytime quizshow contestants for what appears to be the first time in his life. They are four family members, who yelp and whoop with an undeniable zest for life. They go on double dates, based on letters of the alphabet. For H, they went horse riding. For P, they went to Paris. And their appearance on Bridge of Lies is their letter T. “FOR TELEVISION!” they boom as one, all megawatt smiles and jazz hands. In response, Ross Kemp quietly blinks and then mumbles, “Shall we get on with the game?” with a mixture of boredom and disdain.
But then the oddest thing happens. Once the game itself gets going, and he’s freed from the tyranny of small talk, Kemp absolutely blossoms. It helps that Bridge of Lies is built on an orderly system of left-brain logic that he can fall back on at any time. It’s about finding a path across a floor that is covered in spots, with each spot containing an answer. Say, the category is “Disney films” – one spot might say “Bambi”, the other “Shrek”. Jump on the one that Disney made and you get to continue the path. Hop on Shrek, meanwhile, and your prize total plummets.
There are other typical gameshow complications, of course. Someone backstage has a blue button they can press at any time, and some of the spots just exist to let the contestant have a breather. The rules have to be explained time and time again, in a way that would absolutely exhaust a lesser mortal. But Ross Kemp gets off on this stuff something rotten. At every opportunity, he will jump in with a floor-to-ceiling list of each possible element that the game has to offer.
This is his thing. Ant and Dec thrive by vicariously living through the contestants, amplifying their moments of triumph and anguish for the crowd. Danny Dyer thrives by creating a sense of seat of his pants chaos. But Ross Kemp demands order. This is his house, these are the rules and you will obey them. Once he settles into that pocket, the man is untouchable.
The game itself, once it’s being played, is irresistible. It’s designed so beautifully that, if a player does well, it looks like a delicate piece of art. And if a player does badly, at least in my experience, you’ll scream yourself hoarse berating their stupidity. This is sleek and gleaming and finely engineered programme-making.
And it’s fun. I put off watching Bridge of Lies for almost a week because my expectations were so low. But then, as soon as the first episode finished, I started watching the second. This could very well be a huge hit for the BBC. It turns out that Ross Kemp can present a quizshow just as easily as he can look like a naked veiny idiot on Twitter. Is there nothing the man can not do?
Bridge of Lies is on BBC One today at 4.30pm.
