Chess Masters: The Endgame Proves That No, Chess Is Not a Spectator Sport

They did it with baking. They did it with sewing. They did it with pottery. Can they do it with chess? By adding enough double entendres, excitable co-presenters and ludicrously overstated stakes, can they turn another largely non-verbal hobby that people occupy themselves with of an evening into a workable television format? No they can’t, not that it stopped them from trying. 

BBC Two’s Chess Masters: The Endgame is a half-hour reality talent show in which players compete to win the title of, presumably, ‘Best Chess Player In a 2025 TV Show Filmed at Cardiff Coal Exchange’. With all the atmosphere of a poorly attended timeshare presentation, the show takes half a dozen chess players an episode, gives them nicknames that made them sound like the robots from Robot Wars (“The Swashbuckler”, “The Unrelenting Warrior”, “The Unruly Knight”…), and sics them against each other on little tables in the middle of a draughty high-ceilinged hall. There, they’ve clearly been encouraged to talk through their games in a way that feels as unnatural as it does impolite.

Who will win? Who will be eliminated? What is “castling” and why do I feel like I’d be better off not entering it as a search term in Google?

Presenting is a velvet-suited Sue Perkins, who fulfils her remit admirably by smirking about “bishop bashing” and players whipping out their pieces to pop them on the board. She’s there with help from chess Grand Master David Howell (an expert) and Anthony from The Traitors (there for vibes, and apparently vying for the dubious honour of becoming the next Gregg Wallace). The latter pair hide The Piano-style in a secret observation den that’s been done up like a chess-themed escape room on an industrial estate. Does it make compelling television? It does not, which is frustrating because there are some great stories here.

Despite the whiff of ‘that’ll have to do’ coming from every other element of Chess Masters, the casting team have done an excellent job. They’ve found Nick (“The Swashbuckler”), a former bouncer who discovered chess in prison and who now runs clubs and uses the game to teach the power of strategizing and staying out of what he calls “shenanigans” to those serving at His Majesty’s Pleasure. Nick is pure TV – confident, made of soundbites, and with a genuinely compelling backstory. 

Nick plays a game against Navi (“The Unrelenting Warrior”), a father who played chess with his young children when he was too unwell to kick a ball around with them due to having stage four cancer. Facing his diagnosis, Navi wanted to “put chess in his children’s hearts”, and is here to make them and the chess club members who helped him through his illness, proud. Job done.

There’s Welsh Claire (“The Killer Queen”) and Scottish Caitlin (“The Smiling Assassin”), both of whom were taught chess by their dads and both of whom have stories about being outnumbered by boys in the game as young girls and triumphing. Claire teaches English as a foreign language to young people from Ukraine, and says chess has helped her to cope with menopausal anxiety and depression. Caitlin says she can sense when a checkmate is within reach because the top of her head gets warm. These people are clearly magnificent and deserve better than this inconsequential, fake-stakes nothing of a show. We all do.

Had Chess Masters been a documentary series following stand-out stories from the nation’s chess clubs, it could have been something of value that opened doors to the game. Instead, we get a man in a waistcoat giving insights including: “The Swashbuckler’s been swashbuckled!,” and “Claire might well sigh, she’s just made what’s known in chess as a blunder.” It’s also known as a blunder everywhere else.

Some of the contestants have either been stitched up in the edit to look a fool (“classically trained” actor Cai, who thinks he’ll succeed because the plebs will be knocked off their game due to unfamiliarity with being near a camera) or are simply putting on the kind of front that they think fame at this level demands. It’s not their fault, but all of ours, for watching this make-a-contest-of-it nonsense, for accepting it when these no-doubt talented TV creatives could instead be making something of worth. 

The whole thing feels inadvertently comic when, commissioned differently, it could have been poignant and revelatory. Try as Grand Master David Howell might (and he does) to inject excitement and tension into proceedings, it’s hard to shake the sense that this is the TV equivalent of adults making exaggerated silly faces to try to raise a smile from an impassive baby. “Some very very nail-biting moments there, I hope you’re all incredibly proud of yourself,” says Perkins. I hope they are, too. I’d be proud of them, if I knew anything about chess, which, after watching two episodes, remains to a non-player like me, mysterious and dull. Perhaps this is just one for the experts.

Chess Masters: The Endgame airs on BBC Two and iPlayer. 

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