Game shows have a surprisingly long history, starting with their roots in radio quiz shows in the 1930s to today’s glut of revivals, with plenty of drama and scandals along the way.
It occurred to me over the course of reading this book that I’ve not actually seen many American game shows beyond Jeopardy – I was more likely to pass my time watching Telugu game shows aired in the early afternoon with my grandmother during summer holidays. But the appeal of game shows in universal, and besides I’ve always enjoyed a cultural history of anything at all.
In this book, Hadleigh takes us on a tour of the evolution of games shows in the United States, hitting all sorts of genres and angles of the history. Hopping back and forth in time, he discusses the different game formats that became popular formulas, producers and hosts and contestants, and drama such as the quiz show rigging scandals of the 1950s.
It was also fascinating to learn more about how the shows that are pretty much institutions today came to be that way, as well as about the hundreds of pitched shows that sank without a trace. Producers really seemed to thick that throwing ideas at a wall and seeing what stuck was an excellent business plan.
However, I didn’t think the content was organized in the best way, as we weave between the years and different types of shows from one chapter to another, making it hard to understand how game shows cross-pollinated each other as the genre became more established. I also found some of the author’s odd asides about personalities involved in the stories distracting, especially when he discussed or speculated on the sexualities of some hosts where it seemed irrelevant (excepting, of course, the chapter discussing diversity among the hosts).
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.