What Are the Worst Game Shows of All Time?
On Jan. 27, 1961, CBS television viewers were treated to one of the most bizarre half hours of television ever seen. On a nearly bare stage, comic superstar Jackie Gleason sat on a chair and, in a monologue, apologized for the previous week’s premiere episode of You’re in the Picture, perhaps the worst game show ever inflicted on the public.
In the series, four celebrities stuck their heads into a life-size illustration of a scene or song lyric, with each taking guesses or getting hints from Gleason, who hosted. The result wasn’t pretty, so Gleason took to the air the following week to say that the now-canceled show “laid, without a doubt, the biggest bomb … this would make the H-bomb look like a 2-inch salute.”
Maybe, but You’re in the Picture actually has some stiff competition for any booby prize going to worst ever game show. From the head-slapping dumb to the wildly inappropriate, TV history is rife with options.
Take 1951’s Who’s Whose, which asked a star panel to pick which of three men was actually married to each of three women, based on clues and information. A turbaned gentleman, mysteriously named “Gunga,” let the audience know the right answer. Blissfully, this ran only one episode.
The 2000s were especially bad
Robert Voets/Fox/Courtesy: Everett Collection
Sadly, the same can’t be said for three series that preyed upon a person’s self-image in attempts to get high ratings. There was The Swan, which ran for about 19 episodes in 2004 on FOX and featured two self-tabbed “ugly duckling” women who underwent three months of therapy, cosmetic surgery, training — call it Extreme Makeover: Comb Edition, if you will — to increase their beauty. But only one duckling won the audience title of the Swan.
On the single season of 2006’s Identity, host Penn Jillette led players to figure out what a person did for a living based on how they looked, their hobbies, pet ownership, and other factoids. And ABC’s Are You Hot?: The Search for America’s Sexiest People ran for six episodes in early 2003. Host JD Roberto announced that this was the show that “cuts to the chase. … We don’t care if you can dance, sing, or tell jokes. All we wanna know is one thing: Are you hot?” The nation was divided into four “hot zones” from which contestants were chosen, and three judges and the at-home viewers got to vote. The big loser? America!
G4TechTV/Courtesy: Everett Collection
Another trio of shows simply tried to make contestants as uncomfortable as possible for big prizes — in other words, literally playing “jeopardy.” The most infamous is probably the 11-episode 2008 G4 network series Hurl!, and the object was right there in the title. Contestants would eat a lot of food, then do a physical activity that usually involved lots of spinning, with the winner being the last one to blow chunks.
On the 2002 FOX series The Chamber, coproduced by, of all people, Dick Clark, players tried to answer increasingly difficult questions while bound inside a torture chamber, where they experienced extreme conditions of heat, cold, and other discomforts. Only three episodes aired. And on The Moment of Truth, which ran for 38 episodes on FOX in 2008, folks were given a lie detector test before appearing, only to be asked leading questions again on the show that could make you lose your marriage!
The worst of the worst game shows
Everett Collection
We’ve saved our particular scorn for these final two, which made for some of the strangest voyeuristic television ever. Yes, Queen for a Day ran for nine seasons starting in 1956, but even then, the concept and execution made one wince. Four women in the audience each came up to spin their personal tales of incredible woe, and the person with the saddest story — based, horrifically, on applause from the audience — won her particularly needed wish … and a crown.
But nothing, and we mean nothing, could probably ever top Three’s a Crowd. The single-season syndicated series was so controversial that its cancellation also led to creator Chuck Barris‘ other three series (The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show) being taken off the air, with Barris himself going into seclusion. The concept? As host Jim Peck announced in each episode, three men were soon to find out who knows him best, his wife or his secretary. The questions were, of course, meant to stir the pot for laughs, and later, perhaps, litigation, such as asking what body part of a man’s secretary he’d prefer to see on his wife. One can only wonder what Jackie Gleason would have made out of that.
This article originally ran in the September 2024 Gameshows Issue of ReMIND Magazine. You can purchase it at the link below.
Game Shows
September 2024
It’s play time! We’re clueing you in on the greatest panel and quiz shows that ever buzzed about on television.
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