On Wednesday, The Chase host, Bradley Walsh, welcomed contestants Jonny, Emma, Max and Helen in their fluorescent shirts to take on chaser, Mark 'The Beast' Labbett, in a series of general knowledge questions. The team gave an overall strong performance - much to Bradley's delight, but failed to take home the £75k cash prize with them.
First up was 62-year-old Helen from West Sussex, who wanted to use the cash prize for a first class trip to see her family in Australia. She managed to bag a comfortable £7,000 in the cash builder round and decided to stick with what she had earned.
Read more: The Chase viewers shocked as player takes minus £8k offer in the head-to-head round
Helen got off to a strong start and guessed correctly that Scarlett O'Hara's father was Irish in the classic film 'Gone with the Wind' and that C.P Scott's quote "The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it", referred to the word 'television'. She also proved herself to be a well-read contestant when she explained that the French word 'marmite' meant 'cooking pot' and was the answer to one of the questions.
Luckily, Helen managed to bank the £7,000 that she aimed for thanks to the final question, which asked: "Which of the leading light of the 'Swinging Sixties' had previously fought in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948?'. Helen guessed correctly that it was Vidal Sassoon over Yves Saint Laurent and David Bailey.
Next up was Max - a game programming student from Surrey, who enjoyed collecting swords from junk shop in his spare time. In the cash builder round, Max earned £5,000 but decided to go for the ambitious £35k in the next round against The Beast. But it was a shaky journey for both Max and The Beast, especially when both of them got the third question wrong - a correct answer from the chaser could've seen the contestant go home early.
At one point, the game show's host, Bradley Walsh, was desperate to see Max outrun the chaser and smacked a part of the set in excitement, which ended up "cracking" it. Following the incident, Bradley jokingly asked if Max could lend him some money to repair the set if he won the show.
But any hope for Max was short-lived, as he answered the following question incorrectly: "Which actor got banned from presenting the Oscars for 20 years for making a speech attack China's treatment of Tibet?" The contestant went for Richard Harris over Richard Gere, and with that Max left the competition empty handed.
The third contestant was horse-racing enthusiast Emma from Cheshire. She wanted to use the cash prize to take her dad and husband to a big horse race show such as Cheltenham and the Royal Ascot. The audit administrator managed to bag a modest £3,000 in the cash builder round and decided to stick with it in the second round of the game show.
With gradual confidence, Emma managed to guess a couple of good questions in the head-to-head round. She guessed that Finger was not a Shakespeare character, while The Beast incorrectly guessed it was Elbow. She also guessed correctly that Albert Gunter drove a double-decker bus over a three-foot gap as London's Tower Bridge raised without warning in 1952. Emma successfully banked the £3,000 - which resulted in £10,000 in the cash prize fund.
Jonny from West Yorkshire was the fourth and final contestant. He wanted to use the money to convert his garage into a playroom for his three kids. Although he got £6,000 in the cash builder round, Jonny was aiming big and opted for the £65,000 offer by The Beast.
Like Helen and Emma before him, Jonny gave a promising performance during the head-to-head round. He guessed correctly that Roman Polanski's films 'Repulsion', 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'The Tenant' were part of the director's Apartment Trilogy.
He then went on to guess that since 1990, the longest period between two UK general election had been for 10 years. Unfortunately, the chaser got it wrong and guessed it was five years. Jonny banked the £65,000 thanks to this question: "What did Marcel Marceau call "the art of expressing feelings by attitudes"?. Luckily for Jonny and the rest of his teammates, he correctly guessed that it was mime, which meant that the cash prize fund was overall at £75,000.
With Helen, Emma and Jonny now in the final round, things were looking optimistic. But the trio were faced with some challenging questions and only managed to answer 14 questions correctly. Despite three setbacks, The Beast managed to catch up with the team with an impressive 27 seconds to spare. Bradley unfortunately had to take the £75k away from the team as they admitted it would have been "easier" had Max stayed in the competition.
