Impossible (game show)

Impossible (stylised as !mpossible) is a British television quiz show created by Hugh Rycroft and produced by Mighty Productions for BBC One. Hosted by Rick Edwards, the show has a maximum prize of £10,000 and features questions in which some answer choices are "impossible" or inconsistent with the given category. Episodes of Impossible are also seen in the United States on the over-the-top internet television services Plex, Xumo and The Roku Channel, with each looping episodes 24 hours a day on its own dedicated streaming channel.

Impossible
GenreQuiz show
Presented byRick Edwards
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series8 (Regular)
2 (Celebrity)
No. of episodes225 (Regular; as of 23 April 2021)
12 (Celebrity; as of 27 April 2019)
Production
Production locationDock10 studios HQ1[1]
Running time45 minutes (Regular)
60 minutes (Celebrity)
Production companyMighty Productions
Release
Original networkBBC One
Original release2 January 2017 (2017-01-02) –
23 April 2021 (2021-04-23)

Host Rick Edwards confirmed in July 2022 that the BBC has cancelled the show.[2]

Gameplay

With the exception of Round 2 (see below), all questions used on the show are multiple-choice with at least one answer each of three different types: correct, wrong or "impossible". The impossible answers are distinguished by being inconsistent with the premise of the question. For example, if the question were "Seoul is the capital of which Asian country?", the choices could be:

On each episode, a pool of contestants competes through two rounds until one is left to play for either the £10,000 jackpot or a smaller daily prize pot built up during the course of the game. Contestants leave the show after playing the £10,000 question once whether they win or not. With the exception of the last episode of each series, players who fail to reach the £10,000 question for any reason return on the next episode as long as they have not reached the end of their eligibility.

The size of the pool and the contestants' time on the show have occasionally changed. In Series 1, 30 contestants competed across all 15 episodes. The entire pool was replaced after every ten episodes in Series 2 and 3 and after every five episodes from Series 4 onward. The pool was 24 contestants in Series 2 through Series 4 and 21 in Series 5. Also, in Series 1, contestants remained on the show until either winning the £10,000 prize or making two unsuccessful attempts at it, rather than one as in all subsequent series. Series 8 had 12 contestants instead of 21 due the coronavirus pandemic social distancing guidelines.

During Series 1 to 3, contestants who left the show were replaced by new ones to keep the pool at a constant size. Starting with the Series 4, the departing contestant is not replaced, leaving their seat empty.

Qualifier & Grid

This round is played three times, with each playing split into two halves, a qualifier and the grid, to choose a contestant for the Final. The scores are set to zero at the beginning of each Qualifier.

In the Qualifier, the host asks five multiple-choice questions; each with three answer options. Contestants secretly lock in their guesses and earn one point for each correct answer. Wrong answers leave the score unaffected, but an impossible answer, or a failure to answer within the time limit, eliminates the contestant from the game. If exactly one player remains uneliminated after a question, the qualifier is immediately halted and that player qualified for the Grid. However, if all remaining contestants are eliminated on a single question, the entire pool is brought back into play. After the fifth question, the high scorer advances to the grid; any ties for high score are broken in favour of the contestant who took the shortest total time to lock in their answers.

For the Grid, the high scorer chooses one of four categories and is shown nine answers: one correct, three wrong and five impossible. After hearing the first half of a question, they choose five answers they believe to be impossible; each successful choice adds £100 to the daily prize pot and is removed from the board. The host then reads the second half of the question with all chosen non-impossible answers returned to play and the contestant must choose the correct answer in order to advance to the Final. Choosing a wrong answer gives the runner-up/last player who was eliminated from the first half a chance to find the right answer and advance; however, if this contestant chooses a wrong or impossible answer, the high scorer moves ahead. If any impossible answers remain on the board and the high scorer chooses one, they are eliminated and the runner-up gets a turn; if they fail to choose the correct answer, the host begins working down through the next-highest scorers until one of them does so.

Categories are removed from the list of four as they are chosen leaving three options in the second playing and two in the third. The maximum daily prize pot is £1,500; this is accumulated by eliminating all five impossible answers in every playing of the grid. Contestants who advance to the Final sit out all subsequent playings of the Qualifier and Grid.

If a Qualifier begins with only one contestant left in the pool, they must still give a correct answer in order to advance to the Grid.

Final

The three remaining contestants compete directly against one another answering a series of open-ended questions on the buzzer. Each is given 10 lives to start the round; a correct answer takes one life from both opponents while a wrong answer takes one from the contestant who buzzed-in. Some of the questions are themselves impossible (e.g. "In which decade of the 20th century was Pablo Picasso born?" – he was born in 1881, during the 19th century). Correctly identifying an impossible question costs both opponents two lives; however, if a contestant either tries to answer an impossible question or falsely identifies a question as impossible or does not answer immediately after buzzing-in, they lose two lives. Contestants who lose all their lives are eliminated from the game; the last one remaining advances to the £10,000 Question.

£10,000 Question

The last remaining contestant is asked one question in a randomly chosen category and shown nine answers; three each of correct, wrong and impossible. The contestant has 10 seconds to choose three answers and wins the £10,000 jackpot if all three are correct. They win the daily prize pot if any of their choices are wrong but none are impossible and nothing at all if they choose an impossible answer.

During Series 1, contestants who missed the question were asked a second one under the same rules. This format was dropped at the start of Series 2 giving only one chance to win any money.

The format was further altered in Series 4 in that the departing contestant was no longer replaced leaving that seat empty for subsequent episodes. The batch of contestants would also stay for a week instead of two like in previous series.

The jackpot is presented onstage as a giant exclamation mark containing 10,000 £1 coins. When a contestant wins it, a hatch in the bottom opens and the coins drain into a hopper underneath.

Impossible Celebrities

On 20 February 2018, it was announced that Impossible would be launching a primetime Celebrity version which began to air in August that year. This version follows the same rules as the Regular version with two changes:

  • The pool consists of 18 celebrities; each are playing for a charity of their choice.
  • If a celebrity gives an impossible answer during the Final, the daily prize pot is cut in half and donated to their charity.[3][4] In Series 1 Of Impossible Celebrities the stars that competed included Spencer Matthews, H, Vicky Pattinson, Rory Reid and Dick And Dom. In Series 2 Of Impossible Celebrities the stars that competed included Charlotte Crosby, Melvin Odoom, Radzi from Blue Peter, Sally Lindsay And Eyal Booker. After every episode the Celebrity who played the Ten thousand pound question would be replaced by another Celebrity in their seat/chair in the next Episode.

Transmissions

Regular
SeriesStart DateEnd DateEpisodesNotes
12 January 2017[5]20 January 2017[6]15[6]Series 1 did not take any breaks.
222 May 2017[7]30 June 2017[8]30[8]Series 2 did not take any breaks.
316 October 2017[9]27 July 2018[10]30[10]Series 3 took breaks on: 13 November 2017 – 13 July 2018.
430 July 2018[11]31 August 2018[12]25[12]Series 4 did not take any breaks.
529 October 2018[13]23 November 2018[14]20[14]Series 5 did not take any breaks.
622 April 2019[15]4 October 2019[16]50[16]Series 6 took breaks on: 27 May–30 August 2019.
719 October 2020[17]20 November 2020[18]25[18]Series 7 did not take any breaks.
815 March 2021[19]23 April 2021[20]30[20]Featured COVID-19 measures. Series 8 did not take any breaks.

Celebrity
SeriesStart DateEnd DateEpisodes
118 August 2018[21]30 September 2018[22]6
22 March 2019[23]27 April 2019[24]6

Merchandise

The official Impossible app for iOS and Android was released by Barnstorm Games on 28 August 2019.

References
  1. "!mpossible". Dock10. Retrieved 20 September 2021.
  2. https://www.tvzoneuk.com/post/impossible-repjul22
  3. "BBC One announces !mpossible Celebrities". BBC.
  4. "All-star line-up revealed for !mpossible Celebrities". BBC.
  5. "Impossible – Series 1, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
  6. "Impossible – Series 1, Episode 15". BBC. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
  7. "Impossible – Series 2, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
  8. "Impossible – Series 2, Episode 30". BBC. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
  9. "Impossible – Series 3, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
  10. "Impossible – Series 3, Episode 30". BBC. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  11. "Impossible – Series 4, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  12. "Impossible – Series 4, Episode 25". BBC. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  13. "Impossible – Series 5, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 21 October 2018.
  14. "Impossible – Series 5, Episode 20". BBC. Retrieved 27 January 2019.
  15. "Impossible – Series 6, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  16. "Impossible – Series 6, Episode 50". BBC. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  17. "Impossible – Series 7, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 18 October 2020.
  18. "Impossible – Series 7, Episode 25". BBC. Retrieved 4 November 2020.
  19. "BBC One - Impossible, Series 8, Episode 1".
  20. "Impossible – Series 8, Episode 30". BBC. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
  21. "Impossible Celebrities – Series 1, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  22. "Impossible Celebrities – Series 1, Episode 6". BBC. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  23. "Impossible Celebrities – Series 2, Episode 1". BBC. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  24. "Impossible Celebrities – Series 2, Episode 6". BBC. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
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