The one that might work on streaming, Pop Culture Jeopardy, is now out to watch on Prime Video and in actual fact the first three episodes are up in the UK storefront right now. New episodes go up every Wednesday, and it’s a 40-episode run.
Pop Culture Jeopardy sees teams of three battle it out in a series long tournament with $300,000 on the line for the eventual winners. New to the series is the ‘Triple Play’, a three part question/answer/clue/whatever that each person in the team has to give a response to win triple the clue’s value.
The show is hosted by the Jost with the most, Saturday Night Live‘s Colin Jost.
No word on plans for series two of UK Jeopardy, but it doesn’t sound like they’re giving it a New Year’s berthing/baptism of fire like last year. It’s been filmed.
Somebody on Reddit last month said they were on an episode that was filmed recently (as of then).
https://www.reddit.com/r/BritishTV/comments/1ggj7wr/is_jeopardy_uk_set_for_a_series_2_within_the_new/
Oh yes I knew it had been filmed, should have made that clearer.
It’s… fine? It is mostly what it says on the tin. Colin Jost does a very solid job as host. Having teams doesn’t have as much of an impact as you would expect, and the triple plays, where all 3 team members have to provide an answer, seem so tricky that I see teams avoiding answering them. The teams feel a little more central casting-y than I’d like but it’s not horrendous or anything.
The only problem is that it just doesn’t feel hugely necessary given the ton of other Jeopardy! stuff out there and it doesn’t really do enough different to stand out
The questions feel a bit too US-centric at times to have much international appeal but it’s still nice it’s been made available.
It’ll be interesting to see if it lasts, especially given the thread about streaming and quiz shows. I don’t think regular Jeopardy is readily streamable so that might be a selling point. The questions suggest the show is targeting a younger audience in their teens/early-20s, which is interesting and probably a little younger than I would have expected. Pop Culture as a topic feels like is has a better chance of reaching an audience than sports – plenty of folks like sports but obscure sports trivia has much narrower appeal.
One thing I’m intrigued about is does having each question a nine-way reaction test buzzer battle turn it into a crap shoot or will the cream still rise?
I quite like Jost’s lightness of touch.
Episodes 5-8 minutes longer than on proper TV, don’t think there’s much wasted time but the pace I think can be fairly described as ‘chill’ – maybe a bit too chill for my tastes. But not offensively Stephen Fry so.
As long as one of you knows one of the answers to a Triple Play they’re basically no risk. Not sure they add much really.
Think the way they’ve done Final Jeopardy might look a bit nicer if they filled the space surrounding the box with a different shade of blue rather than… nothing. Edit: or even have Jost introduce it at the board similar to how Trebek used to do it.
One more thing, since someone asked a good question on the Discord – I didn’t think the level of Americana was that offputting, but I couldn’t say I could engage with the material in the same way like I could on Rock and Roll Jeopardy, for example.