The Game Show Show

This documentary covers the entire history of game shows. It is fun to reminisce with the interviews and video clips of game shows past and the many characters who populated them.

I am a fan of the early celebrity panel game shows, like "What's My Line", "I've Got a Secret" and "To Tell the Truth"; these are discussed in the first episode, but I hope they delve deeper in later episodes. I would also like to see coverage of "You Bet Your Life". But there is a lot of ground to cover, considering seventy plus years of game show history.

A lot could be written about game show contestants and how their lives were changed by their moments of celebrity.

This could have been something really good, but it wasn't. Firstly, this should have been one two-hour special on ABC, rather than 4 one-hour episodes. After episode #2, this really wasn't about game shows anymore. But to get to four episodes, they had to change/broaden the definition of what a game show is. Have you ever heard Survivor, American Idol, The Bachelor or Love Connection referred to as a "game show"? Neither have I.

Secondly, the show was poorly written, and the talking heads were mostly unknowns who were barely interesting. They seemed to think it was a big deal to show Patrick Gomez from Entertainment Weekly, who was condescending and pretty much unlikeable whenever he opened his mouth.

Thirdly, it became obvious that there was a quid pro quo regarding "famous" personalities agreeing to appear on the show, because they would then include the shows that these people hosted. The most glaring example of this (and there are many) was choosing to show Sherri Shepherd hosting "The Newlywed Game" on the Game Show Network, which nobody watched, and ended in 2013.

Fourthly, it seems that any show being made nowadays has to take potshots at Donald Trump, and because he hosted The Apprentice, that was a way to justify bringing Trump into this series and trashing him. Honestly, this is SO tiresome.

Finally, while the show played it pretty much down-the-middle for most of the series, by the time the second half of the final episode rolled around, they could no longer contain themselves, and became super-woke. I'm sure the producers were extremely proud of themselves, but had they done this in episode #1, I would have turned it off (which is probably why they waited until the end of the final episode). Accordingly they were "penalized" a point by me, which is why my rating is a "5" and not a "6."

This series is a great trip down memory lane, both for things I knew about game shows ... I grew up watching them during summer vacations from the mid-60s on ... and interesting facts from shows earlier than experience.

A great deal of time was spent on the game show scandals of the 1950s ... behavior which almost killed the genre.

We move one to Merv Griffin's idea for Jeopardy, which he didn't take very seriously himself until a suggestion from his wife to "give the contestants the answers!" LOL Merv thought she was crazy. That's exactly what almost killed the quiz show in the first place!

That's in the first episode, and the series goes on to explore interesting facts about the people and the games and interesting events during the shows. If you've ever enjoyed game shows, you'll like this hour long documentaries about them.