Would You Rather? debuts tonight on BBC America at 11 p.m. Eastern.
In recent years, the Game Show Network has slowly shed its reserves of classic quiz shows and celebrity-panel fare, but it’s telling that the sleeker, less campy version of the network (call it “GSN” now—it’s not a kid any more, mom) still airs regular reruns of The Match Game. Years after that program’s perpetually pickled celebs have either died or lapsed from the public consciousness, there remains something fascinating about watching moderately famous people interact in such an informal setting. During the heyday of Match Game, Hollywood Squares, and Celebrity Sweepstakes, a star could foster their own brand of celebrity just by regularly appearing on such shows; Match Game fixtures Charles Nelson Reilly and Brett Somers certainly did, and Richard Dawson proved so popular with the show’s guests and viewers, he more or less earned his hosting gig on Family Feud by filling in Gene Rayburn’s blanks.
But that was many years ago, and American audiences have largely given up on panel shows, now preferring to get their fix of no-frills, possibly canned action footage of people who are famous for being famous via reality TV. These days, when a panel show does emerge in primetime, it’s along the lines of The Marriage Ref, which deflated the candid fun of its predecessors by acting outright hostile toward its non-celebrity guests. If any proper panel-show revival is to take place, its seeds will need to be planted by the British, who have kept the format alive following its decline in the States with ample amounts of cheek and lower-than-Rayburn’s-tolearnce-for-Nelson-Reilly’s-antics stakes. Of course, the last time I can recall such a show being imported to these shores was in 2002, when the pop-music quiz Never Mind The Buzzcocks failed to blossom on VH1.
BBC America’s new Would You Rather? isn’t any more likely than Never Mind The Buzzcocks to start an American television revolution. Sure, it has the requisite amount of cheek—what with its proceedings overseen by eternally saucy presenter Graham Norton—and the panels assembled for the episodes airing tonight feature comedic minds that would benefit from more shows which break out of the post-I Love The ’80s talking-head mold. Yet, for all the promising outcomes implied by a panel of people who get paid for being clever hashing out their responses to absurd hypothetical scenarios, the first two episodes of Would You Rather? are a touch dull.
Part of that can be blamed on the format: While Would You Rather? takes its inspiration from a party game that’s been bubbling through the popular culture for years (via sources as disparate as books, board games, and Scott Aukerman’s Comedy Bang Bang podcast), it’s not necessarily the stuff of compelling television. This thought obviously occurred to creators Ali Crockatt and David Scott, and their take manages to break up the monotony of watching the panelists think out loud with frenetic editing, people-on-the-street interludes, a To Tell The Truth-style segment involving six audience members, a Match Game-esque “lightning round,” and props meant to help nudge the panelists toward their decisions. Unfortunately, all these bells-and-whistles end up having the opposite of their intended effect, serving instead as distractions from the core game. There’s a happy medium to be found between Norton simply lobbing hypotheticals at his guests and those guests each taking turns with voice-treated microphones in order to figure out if they’d rather have the voice of Darth Vader or Alvin And The Chipmunks (stand-up comedian and Twitter all-star Joe Mande has the right answer long before the mics appear: Chose Darth Vader and make mad voiceover money like James Earl Jones), but Would You Rather? is yet to find it.
The props speak to another problematic element of Would You Rather?, in that the first two episodes of the show suffer from a forced sense of wackiness. One of the most enjoyable aspects of Comedy Bang Bang’s version of “Would you rather… ” is that its host and guests usually acknowledge the inherent ridiculousness of the questions presented during the segment; it’s a type of anti-humor at which Aukerman excels. On Would You Rather?, however, the questions are almost smug in how zany they are (“Would you rather French kiss a cat or pleasure a frog?” is loaded with some writer’s unwarranted confidence in his or her own funniness), and Norton and the panel aren’t given enough room to dismantle that perception.
To its credit, however, that host and panel are superbly cast. Norton’s quips have a tendency to land with a thud, but he plays the dual roles of instigator and moderator perfectly. His guests are quick on their feet, competitive (this despite the fact they aren’t competing for anything), and willing to follow even the most contrived of the show’s left turns. It obviously helps to have someone as well-versed in improvisational comedy as 30 Rock’s Scott Adsit on the panel in the first episode; his utter commitment to the concept of “Yes, And… ” elevates that installment’s prop segment well beyond its strained premise. And while the arbitrary point system of the game asks for honesty but rewards cleverness, the stray profundity manages to slip through. Tucci introduces a surprisingly weighty tangent to the question “Would you rather everything you said for the rest of your life be the absolute truth or an absolute lie?”—though I suppose that type of answer is the reason you invite Stanley Tucci to be on your silly little panel show.
And really, it’s the guests, not the format, that will sustain Would You Rather? through whatever impact or non-impact it has on U.S. television. After all, the continued appeal of those Match Game reruns is not in the format, or the innuendo-laden prompts, or even the panel’s answers to those prompts—it’s in the interaction between Rayburn and that kooky cast of B-list celebs. Would You Rather? never promises to get as contentious as that show—it’s not like the panelists are competing to help win regular people win some money—but with a little bit of refinement, it could become a reliable piece of Saturday-night fluff. Or, if things go really well, the preferred mid-morning sick-day viewing of 2051.