U.S. Countdown Pilot Chat

[Andres Sanchez]

So... someone's found the U.S. pilot for Countdown.

Apologies if this link is shit, doing all this off my phone.

Thought it'd be appropriate to have this thread for thoughts, comments, and spoilers of the sort. I'll start with me on this, which I'll try to hide in case people wanna watch before hearing what I gotta say on this.


Honestly, I really like this but at the same time I can get why it didn't see the light of day to begin with. I do appreciate how they made their own final round too instead of the one conundrum. Will 100% say that if this was on the air somehow and was filmed in Georgia, you bet your ass I'd sign up on this show. Think there should be better usage of time maybe and get a kind of friendship and home-feeling to everything, especially when switching celebs like they would do in Pyramid over in our neck of the woods. I think that would help fit right in and have everything tied up in a nice bow. Other than that, really like this.

[Philip A]

If Countdown was on ITV, this is exactly what it would look like!

Host is alright, but I can see why it was considered too brainy for the market stateside. The UK had their own versions of American gameshows in the 1980’s, and many of them were equally successful. A few of these have since been rebooted for the 21st century, in some form of another.

[Jon O'Neill]

That's much better than I was expecting!

[Rhys Benjamin]

It's a bit "generic ITV 80s gameshow" in the same mould as Take Your Pick, Play Your Cards Right, et al. The final round for the money is hugely on the clichéd side. But yeah, not terrible.

[Adam Dexter]

Was quite excited when I saw the host was Michael Jackson, but was not quite who i thought it would be

Great show - wonder how different the contestant base would be if there was that sort of money available in ours (I feel like it would become a primetime style casting of "personality" over skill).

[dan spinks]

well, it's certainly very American. Has major flaws in the format/scoring but probably less so than Calendar Countdown and that turned out alright in the end