Plot

Jason Manford hosts the daytime, general knowledge quiz show in which the four contestants can always give an answer - but can they give an unbeatable answer?

Unbeatable is a daytime game show played by four contestants. They have to answer a series of questions with six possible answers. All of the answers are correct, but they all have some form of ranking, and the contestants have to find the answer that has the best ranking out of the six - this answer is referred to in the show as the "unbeatable answer". As host Jason Manford often puts it, "it's not about finding the right answer, it's about finding the best answer".

The first round is a solo round, and it begins with Jason chatting with each contestant before revealing the question and the six answers. The contestant then chooses the answer that they think is ranked the best according to the question, and their selected answer moves down from the wall to the video floor in the middle of the studio. The contestant then has to make a decision based on how confident they are that they have picked the unbeatable answer and is given three seconds to press their button. If they do so within the time, then their answer is put to the test against each of the other five answers. One at a time, the other answers are moved down to the video floor to appear alongside the contestant's answer, then two lines appear from opposite ends of the video floor moving towards each other. When the lines meet in the middle, the answer with the lower rank is pulverized and disappears (as the number of answers decreases, the speed at which the lines move towards each other slows down, for the sole purpose of building up the tension). If the answer chosen by the contestant proves to be unbeatable because it beats all of the other five answers, then the contestant will receive £1,000, but if any of the other answers beats the one chosen by the contestant, they don't win any money in the round.

If the contestant doesn't press their button within the three seconds, then they get to choose an answer that they are confident their first chosen answer will beat. The other answer is moved down to the video floor alongside the contestant's first choice, then the two lines appear from opposite ends and the answer with the lower rank is pulverized after the lines meet in the middle. If the contestant's first answer beats their later choice, they will win £100 and can then decide to either bank the money they have won to that point or play on and select another answer that they are confident their first answer can beat. Again, if they find an answer that beats their first choice, they will not win any money in the round. At the end of each contestant's question, the rankings of all of the six answers are revealed.

After all four contestants have played, the contestant that won the highest amount of money in that round gets to decide who they will play against head-to-head in the second round, with the other two contestants facing off against each other. Each pair of contestants is then shown the next question and possible answers, and starting with the contestant who won more money in the first round (who is behind the red podium, with their opponent behind the blue podium), both contestants get to choose an answer that they think is the unbeatable answer, with each selected answer moving down to appear on the video floor in front of the contestant that chose it. Both contestants are then given three seconds to press their button if they are confident that they have found the unbeatable answer. If either of them do so, then the answer that they chose is tested against the other five answers one by one. If they have found the unbeatable answer, they win £1,000 and the question board, but if any of the other answers beats theirs, their opponent wins £100 and the board.

If neither of the contestants presses their button within the three seconds, then they compete in a series of battles with each of the answers to the question. The first battle is between the two answers they had previously chosen, with the higher ranked answer earning £100 for the contestant that chose it. The contestant that picked the second answer in that battle then gets to choose one of the four remaining answers, and their opponent then chooses another answer, with the higher ranked of these two answers again earning £100 for the contestant that chose it. The first contestant to win two battles wins the board. If a third battle is required to decide the winner, then the contestant who made the first choice in the first battle gets to choose one of the two remaining answers, with the last answer automatically going to their opponent. Regardless of whether the board is decided by an answer being unbeatable or not or by the first contestant to win two battles, once the winner of the board is found, the rankings of all of the question's answers are revealed.

A second question is then asked to the contestants and its answers are revealed. It is played in the same way as the first except that the contestant behind the blue podium gets the first pick of the answers. The first contestant to win two boards wins the round (if a third question board is needed, the contestant behind the red podium gets the first pick of the answers to that question), and their opponent gets to see their name pulverized to smithereens on the wall before they leave.

The two head-to-head winners then compete against each other in the third round, known as The Decider, with the contestant having more money appearing behind the red podium and their opponent behind the blue podium. The contestant behind the red podium gets the first choice from the six answers that appear with the first question, with their chosen answer moving down to the video floor in front of their podium. If the first answer that they choose is the unbeatable answer, then the title graphic will appear beneath it and that contestant will win £1,000 and the question board, but if it isn't, it will be pulverized, £200 is deducted from the amount available and Jason will reveal where that answer is actually ranked before their opponent gets to choose one of the remaining answers. Should an unbeatable answer go to the second contestant by default as the only answer remaining, then that contestant will not receive any money but will still win the board. After the question's unbeatable answer is found, the rankings of each of the answers are revealed. The first contestant to win two boards advances to the final (the contestant behind the blue podium gets to choose the first answer to the second question, and the contestant behind the red podium gets to choose the first answer to the third question if it is needed to decide the winner), and their opponent again gets to see their name pulverized on the wall before they leave.

In the final round, the winning contestant is presented with six possible answers and a choice of two questions that share the same six answers. The contestant chooses which of the questions they prefer to answer, then selects the answer that they think is the unbeatable answer for their chosen question. They then have to choose two other answers that they are confident that their first answer can beat. These answers are brought down one at a time alongside their first answer, and if it beats both of them, then the contestant will win half of the money that they have banked across the previous rounds. They then get to choose whether they want to take the money or play on and try to find two other answers that their first chosen answer will beat. If their first answer beats both of the next two selections, they will win all of the money that they have banked across the previous rounds. They then have another choice to make, to take the money or to test their answer against the last answer remaining to find out if the answer that they chose first is the unbeatable answer. If their answer proves to be unbeatable when it is tested against the final answer, then they will win double the amount of money that they banked, but if they find an answer that beats their first answer at any stage, then they will leave the game with nothing. At the end of the round, the ranking of each of the answers is revealed, so the contestant will always find out whether or not the first answer they chose was the unbeatable answer regardless of how the round ends.

The maximum possible amount of money that can be won is £10,200, which comprises of £1,000 from the solo round (for correctly pressing the button to claim their answer as unbeatable), £2,100 from the head-to-head round (for correctly claiming two unbeatable answers and winning one battle in the board won by their opponent) and £2,000 from The Decider for choosing two unbeatable answers with their first two choices in the first and third boards if their opponent wins the second board) all doubled by choosing the unbeatable answer in the final and having the confidence to play it against all of the other five answers.

When the show was recommissioned for a second season, a couple of different formats of episode duration, gameplay changes and time and channel broadcast were tried. The first 15 episodes ran for 30 minutes each and were usually broadcast at 6:30pm weeknights on BBC Two (one episode was moved to 5:40pm on a Saturday night due to athletics coverage, though the schedule scramble arising from the death of Queen Elizabeth II meant that it actually started at 5:35pm). These episodes removed the solo round, with the contestants instead drawing before the show to determine who they went up against in the Head-To-Head round. The remaining 30 episodes ran for 45 minutes each and were broadcast at 4:30pm weeknights on BBC One, moved from the 2:15pm timeslot used for the first season. These episodes had a different solo round where each contestant received three questions and selected the answer that they thought was unbeatable, but their choice stayed on the wall and they did not have the options to either press their button if they thought that their answer was unbeatable or to choose any other answers to test it against. Instead, the unbeatable answer was revealed among the grid of six possible answers, meaning that the only possibilities for the contestant were to win £100 if they chose the unbeatable answer or no money if they didn't.

Other gameplay changes were common to both the BBC Two and BBC One episodes - the prize offered in The Decider was increased to £1,500 and £250 was removed for each answer found not to be unbeatable, and instead of seeing two questions sharing the same six possible answers in the final round, the winning contestant was presented with three question categories, with the last choice always being "Neither", which was essentially a "pot luck" category type (each question would have its own set of answers not shared with any other questions).

The BBC Two episodes had the same maximum possible winnings as the first BBC One season, with the £1,000 lost from not having the solo round being gained through an extra £500 for both of the questions in The Decider, while for the second season BBC One episodes, which had the same movement from the original solo round to The Decider and an extra £300 in the new solo round, the maximum possible winnings were increased to £10,800, with the extra £600 coming from doubling the £300 won by finding three unbeatable answers in the new solo round.