Higher, lower

There have been so many new game shows lately, I'm getting a bad case of reviewer blahs.

But this is a full-service game show blog, so I'll give you my opinion of ABC's Card Sharks reboot. Like Press your Luck the format is no favorite of mine. Basically it comes down to saying "lower" if the card is higher than an eight, and "higher" if the card is lower than an eight. If the card is an eight, you switch it out.

This is not exactly chess, or even checkers or old maid. The game comes down to pure chance, along with guessing a few survey questions. But ABC did about as good a job as anybody could do with the game. The set was ritzy, as host Joel McHale observed, and Mr. McHale conducted the proceedings with a bit of understated humor that I liked. At least he didn't shout.

On the first ep the contestants seemed reasonable enough, and the audience responded loudly to the producers' requests to yell it up. The card-turners were predictably attractive, though Joel McHale's haircut could use a little work. The Nielsen Company gave the show okay marks, with 4.40M viewers and a 0.8 18-49 rating. No doubt ABC would have liked higher numbers, but they could always have been much lower.

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: