Great news! Game Show Network in the US premiered Beat the Bridge last night and they’ve put up an episode – a different one – on Youtube. Pretty much all strategy has been removed, there’s basically no risk until someone makes two mistakes, it’s only getting the third that ends the round and halves the money which the rest of the team can mitigate with their emergency button. Pathfinding is not an issue, it’s basically a set of seven (plus replacement) Dis or Dat (or Dother) questions throughout, the final is closer to the end game from Trivia Murder Party in its writing than the original, rather than statements it’s “which of X, Y or Z fits the category?” Charitably we will say there’s not much messing about, they fit four bridges and the final within a 20-minute runtime, less than half the UK one, so you’re getting quite a lot of questions and decision making at a decent clip. Cameron Matheson is, er, enthusiastic. The money is quite irritating in that the values on offer aren’t quite round and most of them don’t divide neatly between three people unless you get the $15,000 maximum, uniquely figured out to be aggravating to contestants and viewers alike.
No I’ve no idea why the thumbnail shows a different team to the one playing either.
Holy …., that almost feels like to a parody of a US game show adaptation, from the blandly loud and over-enthusiastic host, embarrassingly easy (and boring!) questions, lack of urgency and near-zero stakes.
They took strong exciting format that would likely translate well and turned it pretty much into the most bland, boring and sterile version of the show possible, which is remarkable in its own way.
So, yeah, not a fan! It’s bad on its own merits, worse as an adaptation.
I know GSN like their shows to not be too taxing, but two wrong answers in the entire show felt really odd. It felt like Tipping Point questions about have been seen as very hard questions on this in places.
This one’s obviously some sort of outlier they can put on Youtube to get eyeballs on, but I’d be fascinated to find out what the average payout is. The endgame seems calibrated so there’s *precisely* the right amount of time to get through 12 attempts providing you answer pretty quickly.