NBC has decided to air its newest game show, The Wheel, five nights a week for the next two weeks. So while you’re wrapping gifts, wrapping returns of received gifts to Amazon, or mashing up leftover eggnog, this celebrity-filled UK import is sure to fill your living room with noise. But is it a good game?
THE WHEEL: STREAM OR SKIP?
opening shot: Host Michael McIntyre stands at the center of a giant wheel around which six celebrities spin in large chairs.
The essentials: On The Wheel, the six celebrities act as experts in one of six categories. In another spinning wheel under the main wheel, three contestants walk around and one is randomly chosen to be lifted onto the main wheel. This is the one who starts building the bank by answering questions.
In the first episode, celebrities were Christina Ricci (Classic Movies), Amber Ruffin (Late Night Hosts), Mark McGrath (The ’90s), Steve Kornacki (Elections), Cat Cora (Greek Food), and Todrick Hall (Beyoncé). The participant chooses the category they want to try first. If the wheel lands on the “gold” Expert, the pot’s money is doubled from $5,000 to $10,000. They also choose a “shutdown” person. If the wheel lands on that person, the contestant is off the wheel and goes back down hoping they get another chance.
The wheel is spun, which is basically all celebrities spinning, with the pointer standing still. If it is not the disabled person, the celebrity can help the contestant answer the general knowledge question in that category. If the contestant is right, money is added to the bank and the category comes off the wheel. If the contestant is wrong, they go down again hoping they get another chance. Meanwhile, the celebs answer questions on tablets in front of them; A “perfect wheel” brings the bank another $5,000.
Once all categories are completed, whichever of the three participants is on the wheel can answer the final payout question. The answers of the celebrities are taken into account: if the candidate wants help from the celebrity with the most correct answers, the pot is halved; if they use the candidate that came in the middle of the list, the pot stays as it is; If they use the participant who had the fewest correct answers, the pot is doubled.
Photo: Chris Haston/NBC
What shows will it remind you of? Take Hollywood Squares and combine it with a giant wheel and the Phone a Friend lifeline in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and you get The Wheel.
Our opinion: The main problem that plagues The Wheel is that it has a lot of gimmicks but not a lot of gameplay. It turns a show meant to look like it’s moving fast, with McIntyre and the celebrities bopping along to loud music while the wheel spins for each question, into one that moves painfully slow. At least 7 questions will be asked throughout the lesson and if there are a few mistakes we might get to 12 questions. That means there’s plenty of filler material as things turn and pregnant pauses become even more meaningful before answers are revealed.
It also doesn’t help that the questions are amazingly simple, like “What late night show did Bill Clinton play the saxophone on?” or “How many House seats are up for election in 2022?” But it seemed like the right answers were in short supply in the first episode. In fact, we weren’t sure who could better answer these questions, the contestants or the celebrities. When Ricci said the Air Jordan was invented in the ’90s, and the contestant agreed, we wanted to pluck what little hair we had from our middle-aged heads.
One of the reasons Millionaire was so brilliant off the bat nearly a quarter century(!) ago was that the questions started out easy and then got exponentially more difficult as the contestant climbed the money ladder. In The Wheel, the questions are all of pretty much the same difficulty, with the cash out question being perhaps half a notch harder, so the risks to the wheel contestant are either bad luck or ignorance of something that most should people over 35 know. That’s not a formula for a successful show.
Still, the show was a hit in the UK, and NBC made the right move and brought McIntyre, the original’s host, to the US version. He has the right upbeat energy for the format and is still able to poke fun at the contestants’ stories and/or celebrity reactions. He always seemed to have a funny phrase when a certain contestant would always tune out Steve Kornacki for each category, for example.
gender and skin: none.
farewell shot: I don’t want to spoil what’s happening, but there’s no hugging and talking between contestant and celebrity. Everyone stays in their places. It’s a very COVID friendly arrangement.
sleeping star: We’re going to give this to Amber Ruffin because we really like her and by the end of the first episode you’ll see why.
Most pilot line: McIntyre jokes that this is an NBC requirement and has a catchphrase for selecting contestants. But it’s pretty bad: “It’s one of three… who will it be?”
Our appeal: SKIP IT. NBC runs The Wheel five nights a week for two weeks, similar to how Millionaire got its start in this country in the late ’90s. It can attract an audience that just wants to see something numbing while wrapping last-minute gifts or coming down from an eggnog high. But anyone who pays close attention will wonder why a show with slow gameplay and questions that were way too easy was a hit in the first place.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t fool himself: He’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company, and elsewhere.
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