Million dollar siesta

Not much of a football fan, so I just watched the premiere of ABC's Million Dollar Mind Game. I can understand why the six episodes are getting burned off in the middle of schedule nowhere.

The basic idea is sort of okay. The host, Vernon Kay in impeccable evening dress, tosses out a tricky question with devious clues to the six contestants. They discuss and argue and ramble for sixty seconds, then have to answer.

There are some helps and a money tree, just like every other million dollar quizzer. If the team eventually racks up four wrong answers, they bomb out with nothing.

But there are problems. Boy, are there problems. The questions are too flipping hard for most of the audience. The pace is funereal. There's endless padding to drag the game out to an hour. And the final vote by the team to continue or leave with $72,000 was completely anticlimactic. After all, the hour was up and every viewer (all three of us, probably) knew the contestants would take the money and run.

I can see how the game became a cult favorite in its Russian homeland. The super-devious questions are mildly entertaining, and the group dynamics among the team can be mildly interesting. But it's more than mildly obvious why ABC passed on the show. Slow, way too difficult, easy to lose interest.

At least the logo offers a cute reminder of the game's Russian origins with the cyrillic character.