The Hit List, BBC One’s highly addictive music quiz, where contestants must name as many hit songs and artists as possible under intense pressure is back for a third series.
Hosted by Marvin and Rochelle Humes, each episode of The Hit List sees music-lovers compete for the chance to win £10,000 by naming as many song titles and artists as possible across four rounds.

With an exciting additional round to the mix, contestants are put up to the challenge of identifying songs across genres and decades. With challenges which test speed and music knowledge, who will come out on top?

Get ready to be impressed, thrilled and potentially shocked at how this group of contestants take on The Hit List!

The format

Round one is a brand new round to the show named Five Of Five From Five. Contestants will be given the opportunity to answer five quick fire music questions and name five artists/songs which have all been top five hits, from five different decades, from the 10s to the 00s, then 90s, 80s and 70s. Each track will be played for five seconds and players must give the name and artist of the track to score a point.

Round two is about momentum. Players will compete to identify tracks and artists to win points. After hearing an extract of a track, it is up to the teams to buzz in the fastest to identify the track and give their answer. Each team has a button they can press if they want to try to identify the track. If correct, they have the chance to earn a bonus point with a bonus track to identify. The first two teams to score ten points progress to round three.

In round three, the two remaining teams go head-to-head to identify tracks only by 'the intros' before their team clock runs out of time. Teams are shown a selection of categories, with each category containing four tracks which are represented by clues. Each team has 45 seconds of time on their team clock. As soon as the track they have chosen begins playing, their clock will start to run down. The only way to stop the track and the clock is to name the artist and the track. The first team to run out of time is eliminated.

Only one team will make it to the The Final Chart Rundown which has the tantalising prize of £10,000 at stake. Contestants must correctly name the artists and titles of ten tracks to win some or all of that £10,000 prize pot. Get questions wrong or take too much time, and the money-clock starts counting down.

Q&A with Marvin and Rochelle Humes

And we’re back! Series three, are you excited to be finally back?

Marvin: Yes, super excited! We always say it's a show that we would be fans of, regardless of being hosts or not. It’s our favourite game to play and we’re back with a third series which is incredible. Because of the pandemic, we got delayed with the recording. However, we were actually the first to record at the BBC Scotland studios post lockdown which was great. So yes, excited to be back on everyone’s screens.

Rochelle: We love to work on the show and we're just pleased that we could make it happen and turn it around during a pandemic, which is brilliant.

What was it like to film in these current times of social distancing?

Marvin: The first episode was different because we had no studio audience but after filming the first episode without the audience, we got used to it.

With social distancing measures, there were slight adjustments to the contestants’ lineup and the stage. But it was absolutely fine! With Rochelle and I being a married couple, we were able to stand together. However, we need to pay credit to the BBC and all of the crew because they kept everyone safe, and the measures were very strict behind the scenes.

What’s your usual advice for the contestants before their first round?

Marvin: The thing with the show is that you can’t rehearse. The contestants that we have on the show are massive music fans and obviously you won’t know the song you're going to get so my advice would be quick on the buzzer, quick with your answers and hope you get it right so you can progress to round two!

What genres of music do you enjoy the most when they come up on the show?

Rochelle: I'm an old school r'n'b kind of girl. When there's any sort of r'n'b, that's when I get pretty happy! And I really like 80’s pop as well. This series, I didn’t realise I knew as many songs as I did!

Marvin: My favourite genres go from pop music to r'n'b. Across the board really! Because I DJ, my iPod has a massive range of music. It’s hard for us to not shout the artists out because there are times when the contestants don't know the answer and I or Rochelle may actually know it. The great thing about the show is that we can actually play it as well but as hosts, we can’t give the contestants any help as there is big money to be won.

Has the bar been raised by this group of contestants this series?

Rochelle: Definitely! We’ve definitely separated the excellent from the good. The new first round, Five Of Five From Five, is quite a testing round so I think that we see, from that point, who’s the strongest and who works well together. As a pair of contestants, one may have a better knowledge of a certain era or genre. I always like the father/daughter or the mother/son combos as I find they work really well.

What can viewers expect from this series of The Hit List when they tune in?

Marvin: Well as Rochelle mentioned, we have a new first round now: Five Of Five From Five. It consists of five songs from five decades that were top five hits. It’s quite a good first round to start with because it’s quick-fire and it gets the game going a lot faster.

Rochelle: We’ve basically made whatever worked in previous seasons even better!