How BBC Competition Format ‘Chess Masters: The Endgame’ Is A “Love Letter” To Producer’s Daughter

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: The BBC‘s upcoming Chess Masters: The Endgame competition format was inspired by so much more than The Queen’s Gambit, its producer has revealed.

For Camilla Lewis, who runs Chess Masters producer Curve Media, this one is a personal tale. Chess Masters stems from the darkest days of the pandemic, when Lewis’ daughter was struggling with her mental health. “The thing which really helped her and gave her an avenue was chess.com,” Lewis told Deadline. “It was taken up by a whole new epoch and generation of people.” On the chess side, things developed quickly for Lewis’ daughter, who had a knack for the 1,500-year-old game.

Swiftly, she was winning tournaments, tutoring chess and was in a relationship with a fellow fanatic. “She had such a passion for it and was telling me about the anthropology, all the different cultures,” Lewis explained. “I realized this wasn’t past tense, it was present tense.

For me, this is a love letter to my daughter and has a deep personal connection that comes from somewhere very genuine.” Lewis said it took “some persuading” to get the BBC on board – coming nearly 50 years after BBC chess gameshow The Master Game – but she pitched Chess Masters to BBC content boss Charlotte Moore at the Edinburgh TV Festival and Moore said: “I think we should do it.” There are an estimated six million people regularly playing chess in the UK, with celebrity fans around the world including Will Smith, Madonna, Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Cole.