Last week the world learned that we're getting a new version of Match Game this summer.
This is far from the first time there has been talk of a new version of the 1970s classic, and it's at least the fourth crack at it in the United States. Most Match Game fans know that the show, in the classic format we all love, hosted by Gene Rayburn, went off the air in 1982. It had been on CBS daytime for much of the '70s and eventually added a syndicated version that hung on until 1982.
The first revival was a version on NBC that lasted about a year, and was combined with Hollywood Squares into one hour. This version is routinely panned by the fans. Although there were a lot of things wrong with the product, the idea of putting the two games together into one 60-minute show wasn't horrible. Rayburn co-hosted the program.
The show returned for one year in 1990-91 on ABC, sans Rayburn. An attempt at a syndicated version lasted one year during the 1997-98 season.
A new version of the show had some success on Canadian television a few years ago. I've seen clips of it online, and it's very similar to the classic, with mostly unknown comedians serving as the celebrity panel. The only notable comedian (for me, anyway) on the panel in this low quality clip is Norm Macdonald. (Online reviews of the show suggest that the questions and answers are mostly lowbrow, and that the panel is more annoying than entertaining. Perhaps that's why I didn't stream episodes of this show regularly when I discovered it a few years ago.)
Several years ago cable network TBS considered bringing the show back, using the classic set and going so far as to tape a pilot, but the show never got off the ground. (The host didn't impress me during the few seconds I was able to sample his work in the clip below.)
Let's do the math. Since the classic Rayburn version went off the air in 1982 we've had three failed versions of the show and a pilot for TBS that was never picked up. Yet 34 years later ABC is going to try to reignite the show yet again? In prime time? Good luck.
I want the show to succeed. I really do. But I'm also skeptical that it will. And if by some act of God it does succeed, I'll likely be disappointed.
The classic version worked because it had the right formula at the right time. The game play was competitive, yet funny. In the 1970s you couldn't be sexually explicit on television. References to boobs were made occasionally, but it wasn't overdone. If the questions suggested that the answer could be penis, it was never said to the best of my knowledge, even by a slang name. That kind of thing didn't fly on TV in the 1970s.
Instead the show relied upon the wittiness of Richard Dawson and Charles Nelson Reilly, among others. Add to that the goofiness of Brett Somers, Patti Deutsch, Joyce Bulifant and others, and you had an amusing show. Rayburn added his own humorous touch for good measure. Sometimes that meant reading questions while doing characters that would be politically incorrect today. A white guy doing a Chinese accent while reading a question about Confucius would be lambasted in 2016.
GSN produced a documentary about Match Game many years ago, and it contained a lot of interview clips with celebrities and off-the-air staff members. I don't remember who said it, but somebody explained that after so many years the novelty of questions featuring double entendres and sexual innuendo no longer held the same charm.
The appetite for Match Game wasn't there in 1990, and from the occasional episodes I have sampled online, the panel and host, Ross Shafer, just didn't have the chemistry to recreate the frivolity and entertainment of its predecessor, even with Charles as a regular panelist and Brett as a guest panelist during some weeks. (I need to find online clips of those episodes.)
I don't remember much about the 1998 version, I'm not sure if it even aired locally, but of the few clips I've seen of it, the show was more dependent upon sexual explicitness. A clip of the show from some "funniest game show moments" compilation show features every panelist giving some slang term for penis as an answer. This shouldn't be surprising, as broadcast standards had been lowered quite a bit between 1982 and 1998.
So here we are, 17 years after the last run of Match Game went off the air, waiting for ABC to try to rekindle magic we haven't seen in more than three decades. I wonder why I'm skeptical.
Baldwin seems like a good choice for emcee. He's witty and charismatic, and he has a variety of broadcasting experiences that should help him grow into the role quickly. A lot of what will make or break the show is the caliber of the celebrities it recruits for the panel. We're not going to see A-list celebrities on the show, but it had better not try to sell us washed up sitcom stars, long-in-the-tooth comedians or the uninteresting reality TV personalities that will be begging for a seat on the panel. And the panelists better be witty and sharp, because that's a lot of what people want from the show. Standard game play with funny questions and obvious answers won't cut it.
Yet even with a winning panel and host, will that be enough? Will people still want to tune in for an hour each Sunday night to see if celebrities match the silly answers given by contestants to questions about Dumb Dora?
I hope that the show tries to succeed without being "edgy." Will we see a lot of questions with sexual overtones and hear a lot of euphemisms for the penis? Questions begging for those types of answers will get old in a hurry. Then again, there's still an audience for the crap Jerry Springer is peddling, so maybe that's a key to the success.
So yes, I'm rooting for the show to succeed, but I'm selfish. I want it to succeed on my terms. And I'm skeptical that can happen. I suspect that its best chance to succeed is by following the formula Steve Harvey and Family Feud have mastered, dropping periodic sexual references into the show.
There are some folks who have already decided that they don't want the show to succeed, as they are certain a 2016 version could never be as much fun as the classic edition.
ABC probably isn't interested in pleasing them. I'm sure the network will be trying to draw viewers who don't wax nostalgic for the 1970s, and don't incessantly watch the '70s reruns.
I find the idea of rooting against the show to be silly. My expectations are incredibly low, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility we could end up with a show that is as good, or better, than the show we love from the 1970s.
Match Game, after all, started as a straightforward game with Rayburn as its host during the 1960s. Airing more than 1,700 episodes on NBC, the show lacked the comedic elements that the 1970s gave us.
Even during its early episodes from 1973, the new Match Game had some straightforward questions that had no element of humor to them. As the story went, according to that GSN documentary, the show wasn't doing so well out of the gates and the producers opted to go full throttle with the humor since they figured they were about to be canceled, and therefore had nothing to lose.
Had the producers remained faithful to the formula that worked so well in the 1960s, we'd never have had a 10-year run, staring in 1973, that is still highly regarded today.
It's unlikely that lightning will strike again in 2016, and odds are that any success by Baldwin and company won't resonate with me, or others who cherish the classic episodes. But I'm glad to see that ABC and Fremantle, the company that owns Match Game, are going to take another stab at it. Perhaps we'll all be pleasantly surprised, and laugh our blanks off this summer.
