NBC hopes to replicate the success of “Deal or No Deal” with its new game show “1 vs. 100.”
Not only does the new game, premiering at 8 p.m. Friday right after “Deal,” have as a host a between-gigs comic–Bob Saget instead of Howie Mandel–but also some of the “Deal” suitcase girls among the 100 people playing against the “1.”
For every answer the single player gets right and others get wrong, the “1” wins money. Anyone who eliminates all 100 members of the mob will walk away with $1 million.
The 100 have something to play for too: If the “1” gets a question wrong, the remaining members of the mob split the pot. That aspect of the show was one of the things that attracted Saget to host the show.
“It got real,” Saget said. “At some points it just felt funny–there are a bunch of people in this mob, and they know they’re on television, so we’d come back from commercial, and ‘It’s the angry mob!’ … But when there really was money at stake, they got very serious about it.”
Also like “Deal,” “1 vs. 100” originated overseas. The game retains its basic format, but executive producer Scott St. John says he tried to give the American version its own flair.
Thus, instead of just asking players the name of the Secretary General of the UN, “1 vs. 100” asks, “If you were playing ‘The Name Game’ with the Secretary General of the United Nations, how would it go?’ ” (Answer: “Kofi Kofi Bo Bofi.”)
Saget isn’t there just to throw in punch lines. What he enjoys about the game, he said, is similar to what he likes doing in his stand-up act–“just bouncing off people.”
“It’s not stand-up, but it does employ what I love about it,” he said. “I’ve got 100 people in front of me, and I can just call on No. 31 and start riffing with that person. That’s just fun.”
