Television networks have been filling their summer lineups with game shows galore. Fox has proved no exception, debuting two new programs the week after Memorial Day. While one puts a new twist on the quiz show genre, the other continues an unfortunately long line of game shows that consist of little more than slapstick humor.
“The 1% Club,” which features Patton Oswalt as host and executive producer, vaguely echoes the early 2000s quiz show “1 vs. 100,” hosted by the late Bob Saget. Whereas the Saget show featured a single contestant competing against an audience group, Fox’s remake is more similar to the popular British show, also titled “The 1% Club,” which sees the group competing amongst itself to win the cash prize.
Rather than answering trivia or general knowledge questions, as in most quiz shows, Fox’s “The 1% Club” utilizes the type of brain teasers more common to an IQ test. The questions, which incorporate logic and require contestants to decipher patterns, start easily, with a question that was answered correctly by 90 percent of Americans (at least in theory), and increase in difficulty.
The panel of 100 contestants gets winnowed over the course of 14 questions, with wrong answers eliminating contestants and increasing the cash jackpot. After the 14th question, any contestants remaining can take an equal share of $10,000, or choose to answer the 15th question — one answered correctly by only 1 percent of Americans — and receive a share of a cash prize of up to $100,000.
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