Realizing that nothing makes for sexy, compelling TV like watching socially awkward people doing math, Fox has picked up the Kal Penn-hosted game show Superhuman for an eight-episode first season. The network gave the series a trial run last month as a two-hour special, featuring such impressive stars as math prodigy Yusnier Viera, who added up numbers at lightning speed, gymnast Brandee Mills, who navigated a maze of laser beams blindfolded and from memory, and former 24 star Mary Lynn Rajskub, who managed to share a panel with Mike Tyson for several hours without fleeing in discomfort and terror.
Hosted by Penn—whose own superpower is making people go, “Hey, is that Kal Penn?” while watching Superman Returns when it inevitably airs on TNT—the series is an adaptation of German-Chinese hit The Brain. Perhaps inevitably, the American show seems to be focusing more on physical feats and flashy stunts (not to mention the superhero-craze-adjacent title), in contrast to the original, which sometimes spends literally five minutes—including slow-motion, talking head cutaways, and a gasping audience—on people staring at, memorizing, and rearranging a deck of cards: