The big advantage of making stuff for children is that your audience doesn’t have taste yet, so you can get away with a lot. And indeed, many things made for children are badly made and lazy. But this Dutch television show, aimed at perhaps ages six to twelve, brings it to an unexpected new level. They’re making an episode about chess — which I wholeheartedly applaud — and for a considerably time they show an enormous chessboard — which I also applaud — with the pieces set up wrongly!1
Yes, while the presenter is explaining how the pieces are set up and what it means to take a piece, black’s queen’s bishop is on b8 and his queen’s knight on is c8. But there’s nothing else to say about that particular disaster and we’re not going to talk about it nor think about it.
Instead, we’re going to talk about a sketch inserted in the show. The sketch shows Barry Snotter2 — I think you can guess who that’s a parody of — playing chess against nobody. I think he has the following position on the board, but he’s using very unusual pieces:3
So unusual even that, after d4 Nxe4; they start talking to him and complaining Barry wants to play Ba5, but said bishop and the d4 pawn are unhappy about that and start complaining. The complaining I get, but the start is baffling. Why didn’t they complain before? When the pieces were set up wrongly, for example? Or when the e4 pawn was simple abandoned? Or when the black h pawn somehow stumbled over the whole board to promote on f1 or d1 — to a bishop, of all pieces! — and then retreated, tail between its legs, all the way to h7.
Barry is very easily cowed into submission and then the sketch just sort of peters out without a punchline.
Realism: 0/5 This is extremely illegal. There is no white pawn that could have promoted to a second light-squared bishop. There are not enough pieces for black’s h pawn to reach d1 or f1.
Probable winner: Voldemort. At least I hope so; he clearly is the hero here.
1. [Which I also applaud, because it gives me material.] ↩
2. [He’s shown to be quite incompetent. I don’t think he could actually snot Barry.] ↩
3. [In very unusual places.] ↩