Game show in which questions are graded on how difficult the British public found them

In Beat the Nation, contestants answer general knowledge questions that are worth different amounts of points depending on how hard the nation as a whole found that question.

The questions are graded on the basis of a YouGov survey of over 1000 people around the country. Each question is worth the percentage of the nation that could not get the answer right. So, a question that 43% of the nation did not know, would give the player 43 points if he or she got the answer correct.

The player with the lowest score is eliminated at the end of each round. The last player remaining goes through to the episode final to see if they can win the cash prize. If they lose, they can come back in the next programme.

Although the show is a simple general knowledge programme, each round differs slightly. One round features a well-known personality on videotape, and the contestants try to guess if they will get a question right to double their points.

Before the commercial break in the middle of the programme, the viewer is asked a 1% question. This is a question that only one per cent of the population got right. The question is answered after the break.

Intrestingly, the programme makes a regular joke about how large numbers of people get seemingly obvious questions wrong, and each episode ends with a statistic about many people could not answer a question about who composed Handel's Water Music, for example.

Beat the Nation was presented by Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor. It was broadcast early 2004, as a replacement for Fifteen to One, which had been axed a few months before. Only one series was ever broadcast, and the time slot no longer contains game shows. It was made by Endemol for Channel 4.