I find most of them, from The Price Is Right to Jeopardy, pretty unchallenging and unfocused. Sometimes I don’t know the Jeopardy answers (questions), and often I don’t know them instantly, but I find the game’s structure uninteresting, a mere hodgepodge of trivia. And that’s among the more challenging of TV game shows.
One alternative game I’ve devised (for U.S. TV, naturally) is called U.S. Geography, or just Geography, in which people are tasked with the job of declaring the mileage between two points, as the bird flies. Round One might be to supply two U.S. cities for the contestants to guess the exact mileage between them. (So this doesn’t turn into a discussion of driving routes, the show’s judges will determine in advance the answer based on the shortest possible air route between the two cities’ limits.) Round Two might be called Landmarks. Round Three might be to add the complication of a third locale. And the final round would require each contestant to write down a locale, and for them to compete to find the distance between the two. Each round would end with the judges superimposing the exact air route between the two points.
Maybe that’s a better title: “Two Points”?
I got this idea when I found myself wondering how far Cleveland was from Pittsburgh, and realizing that I could probably estimate the distance as the bird flies, given a few minutes. Turned out, my guess (105 miles) was off by quite a bit–it’s more like 135 miles.
I seem to recall several game shows that have some kind of distance guessing element here in Germany, I’ve seen it on the TerraX-program, for instance. I always think that’s pretty shallow; I mean, yeah, there’s lots of places and locations you could know or not, but it’s just the same thing over and over again. Not sure an entire show of this would be feasible.
Oddly enough, I believe University Challenge is an adaptation of College Bowl, a similar American game show featuring colleges competing against each other. I think College Bowl was revived recently, except the host was a former NFL player and I remember it had an annoying football theme to the show, which turned me off enough to stop watching.
I’m guessing you’ve seen it, but you’d probably also like Big Fat Quiz Of The Year. Mostly the same people that do all the other shows, but with a lot less structure. It’s a pop culture trivia game, but the questions seem to be more just to keep everything moving along while the contestants (comedians) and Jimmy do their thing.
Yes, I’ve seen that and it’s also fun. The only sadness is that Big Fat Quiz is, normally, only once a year (though there were special episodes, like Big Fat Quiz of the Decade).
And something else the OP may like is Taskmaster. Not a conventional game show but a lot of fun as well.
And note that many of these UK programmes are available on YouTube.
The outtakes from Taskmaster are really good too. There’s a Taskmaster thread around here somewhere, but I don’t think it’s been active for a while, at least not for the current seasonseries.
Only Connect is particularly challenging for Americans (at least, for this American) in that many of the clues have a lot to do with British culture or geography. There’s not much hope for me to figure out the connection when it’s something like service areas on the M1, or presenters of “Match of the Day,” or something like that.
There’s another British show called “Pointless,” which is co-hosted by Alexander Armstrong and (until recently) Richard Osman. The idea is answer questions which have multiple correct answers. The answer the contestant gives is compared to those given in a survey of 100 people. You get a point for each person in the survey that gave that answer. The goal is to end up with the lowest score. That is, to find the answers that are correct, but least likely to be thought of. The best possible answer would be one which is correct, but which no member of the survey identified. That would get no points; i.e., “pointless.” Hence, the title.
It sounds complicated when I describe it, but when you see it played, it makes sense. Again, occasionally the topics are specific to British culture, but most of them are pretty accessible even for Americans. There are many episodes on YouTube.
QI is not really a game show, it is just an opportunity for the elves who write the questions to show off, and to share trivial facts. The point count at the end is purely performative. I think the general quality and interest of the questions has gone down in recent years.
I really liked The One Percent Club. The challenges are usually puzzles of some kind. They go from ridiculously easy (questions that 90% of people got right) to very very difficult (questions that only 1% of people got right). Patton Oswald makes a good host. The show starts with 100 contestants. A contestant is eliminated after a single incorrect answer. They pot for each question is split between remaining contestants. This money is only potential and is not guaranteed. After a certain point (I forget when) the remaining contestants are given the ability to skip a question. They can only skip one question, and doing so takes $1000 out of their winnings. After a certain later point, remaining contestants are given the option to trade the winnings they have earned for (I forget how much guaranteed money) if they leave the game. Any contestants who make it to the final question can take a guaranteed $2500 or choose to risk the final question. If anybody answers the final question correctly, the remaining pot is split between them. As there are generally less than ten contestants left at this point, the pot is usually over ninety thousand dollars.
