The state of TV game shows in the U.S. has been pitiful for some years now, and that’s an ongoing disappointment to those of us who grew up on TV schedules filled with the likes of The $25,000 Pyramid, Scrabble, and Press Your Luck. Yes, stalwarts like The Price Is Right and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? keep chugging along, but there’s not much in the way of decent new quizzer fare. Instead, we get tedious stunt programming like Million Second Quiz, a show whose title accurately evokes the sensation of watching it.
One exception is The Chase on GSN, a pretty good adaptation of a British show that pits contestants against a trivia genius. I wrote about the U.K. original on Gameological last year, and that might be why GSN sent us the exclusive preview clip you see above, which invites viewers to imagine the penis and/or boat and/or boat-shaped penis of some guy in Shanghai. The British version is better—it has a more varied cast and stronger production values overall—but GSN’s take on The Chase still holds its own, and more to the point, you can watch it without subscribing to obscure British TV torrent sites. The second season of The Chase premieres tomorrow on GSN. A question for the game show fans in the A.V. Club commentariat: Are there any recent TV games, American or otherwise, that have earned your loyalty?