Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity?

I know what you’re thinking “hey, I’m a big fan of Taylor Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce, and I’m a big fan of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader/10 Year Old, is there any way I can watch Amazon Prime’s new series Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity in the UK?”

Well yes you can! It’s on UK Prime right now, three episodes now and one every Wednesday hereafter. The interesting question is will we be getting the entirety of Amazon’s new Wednesday ‘game show block’ going forward, including Wish List Games, Buy It Now and (probably the one of most interest to most of you) Pop Culture Jeopardy! going forward to which the answer is “I don’t know!” I wonder if Jeopardy! airing in the UK now might make the rights to that a bit more challenging here. We’ll find out in due course.

AYSTAC (so close to “haystack”) gives people the chance to win $100,000 – and an Amazon gift prize! – to people who can answer 11 questions in various school categories and at various grade levels. The main difference between this and the original is that whilst the original had a class of kids to help the contestants out, here we have five celebrities, with their own strengths and weaknesses, in the same role. Only a couple of changes to the traditional rules – one of the cheats has been replaced by the “pop quiz” – if the contestant isn’t sure of a question they can throw it out and have it replaced by a pop culture question which the entire class can help with. The other change being that if they go for the final 6th Grade question for the jackpot they’re allowed to get help from one of the celebs.

The money ladder isn’t very good, or at least isn’t very interesting. The first 10 questions go from $1,000 to $50,000 with a guarantee point at $15k after Q5, after that it goes $20k, $25k, $30k, $35k, $50k and then the final $100k, but really whilst you can bail at any time, realistically the final two jumps are the only places where it feels like there’s any real decision to be made. It means you’re pretty much guaranteed a 40-45 minute show with between 9 and 11 questions in it, but at no point does that really threaten to become exciting. Kelce is surprisingly OK at hosting, they keep the mistakes in where he makes a joke about it, he’s evidently not short of confidence and the first ep suggests he can think on his feet. Although probably should be told to keep his hands out of his pockets. Why Travis Kelce is asking a bunch of celebrities questions for 6-10 years olds is not adequately explained.

The first ep is basically a harmless way to pass 45 minutes, and that’s the problem really, unless Prime are splashing this all over the front page I can’t see people actively going out and searching for it – you’ve got to really want it. The only one I think has a chance will be Pop Culture Jeopardy purely out of inertia. Annoyingly Prime don’t really give figures out and I can’t see it troubling BARB so we’ll only be able to rely on hearsay (and if it gets recomissioned) to find out if it was worth doing or not.