‘We were really up against it'

Shaun Wallace, Anne Hegerty and Mark Labbett on travelling the world to take on unlikely adversaries…

- Steven Perkins

THE CHASERS ROAD TRIP NEW THURSDAY / ITV / 9PM / EP 1 of 3 / FACTUAL

We’re used to seeing titans of trivia Shaun Wallace, Anne Hegerty and Mark Labbett pit their wits against contestants on The Chase.

But how would the trio fare against child geniuses, great apes and robots? That’s the question explored in ITV’s brand-new series The Chasers Road Trip: Trains, Brains and Automobiles.

Filmed before the pandemic, the three-parter sees them travel around the UK as well as visit the US and Japan in a bid to gain a greater understanding of intelligence in some of its different forms.

Here, in an exclusive interview, Shaun, 60, Anne, 62, and Mark, 55, tell TV Times how they got on…

What’s the idea behind the series?

SHAUN: We were hoping to look at various aspects of intelligence, ranging from intelligence within animals – even though we can’t understand or comprehend them – to child intellect. When we went to Japan, we were looking at new forms of artificial intelligence and how it can help or hinder society.