Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ Returns To ABC With Jimmy Kimmel As Host And Some Coronavirus-Caused Format Changes

Jimmy Kimmel is hosting an all-celebrity season of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, on a brand-new set… with no audience. Recorded during the now-naive-seeming days of mid-March, when we all thought that merely bumping elbows and making TV in with no audiences would stem the advance of the coronavirus, the only people you can hear cheering or laughing at Kimmel or the contestants are the crew. Does it help or hurt the all-celebrity season?

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Because ABC sent critics the third episode instead of the first, we see Will Forte and Nikki Glaser’s appearances from the previous episode, then the familiar theme song plays, and Glaser sits with WWTBAM‘s new host, “America’s Jimmy Kimmel.”

The Gist: The game plays out like Classic Millionaire: 15 questions, starting at $100 and ending at $1 million, with all players playing for charity. The two landing points where you will at least go home with that amount are $1,000 and $32,000. The three lifelines are 50/50, Phone-A-Friend, and Ask The Host. Why Ask The Host? Because you can’t do Ask The Audience without an audience, so, in another corona-related shift, the celebs can reach out to Kimmel for a lifeline. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he jokes to Jane Fonda, the contestant that followed Glaser.

In addition, the celeb can bring The Smartest Person You Know to the set, who sits behind them with a screen and is able to openly help them out during the first ten questions (remember: this is for charity, and past Millionaire celebrity versions have given similar help in order to get to a $32k minimum donation). For the final five questions, the contestant can choose to swap out the Smartest Person for one of the remaining lifelines (Kimmel usually hopes it’s Ask The Host), but can only call on that person once.

The first night’s celebrity lineup was Eric Stonestreet, in an effort to follow up on the Modern Family series finale that preceded the episode, and Will Forte, who brought his father Reb as his Smartest Person.

Our Take: This is the first time Millionaire has been on network television since 2009 (its syndicated version was just canceled in 2019 after a 17-season run), and the format still holds up. It helps to have a host that loves the format — Kimmel won $125,00 as a celebrity contestant during the Regis Philbin era — and some exciting game play. And, while Kimmel (one of the show’s executive producers, along with show creator Michael Davies) might be the most fun host the show has had on this side of the Atlantic, it’s just not a fun as the original U.S. run — or even Meredith Vieira’s long run as the syndicated host.

One reason was out of Davies’ and Kimmel’s control: The lack of studio audience. It’s not like the audience was a huge factor during actual game play; when a contestant is trying to think over a question, the audience is generally silent except for some laughter if the contestant or host makes a joke. But the energy it brings as the contestant gets closer to the million is palpable, and it just wasn’t there. In fact, it felt more like a sketch from Jimmy Kimmel Live than a real-life game show.

The other problem is one that could have been helped: The celebrity contestants. The celebrity weeks of Millionaire were always tough to watch because:
A) the celebs have to goof around and make an effort to show that they’re not just some schlub off the street, and
B) They get so much help until they get to $32k that there’s really no chance that someone will flub a low-level question. The tension isn’t there because the amount of money they win, while going to very worthy causes, won’t change their lives one bit, and that’s what attracts us to shows with huge jackpots like Millionaire.

But we would sign up for Kimmel hosting the show again in a millisecond. This isn’t his first go-around with hosting game shows — most people first found out about Kimmel when he hosted Win Ben Stein’s Money, after all — and the snide sense of humor he had 20-plus years ago has warmed and matured. He’s self-deprecating as usual, but also easily puts the contestants at ease as they’re contemplating the big-money questions, as he did with Glaser who lamented that she might not be able to use her Phone-a-Friend to talk to a fellow comedian who ghosted her after their first date.

Parting Shot: As Anthony Anderson smart-alecks his way through the first ten easy questions, the music for reaching the $32k level plays. “It sounds like the game is over,” he says. Then the horn sounds and Kimmel says, “Well, it is.” Then Kimmel announces that the next round of questions on the new play-along app have gone live.

Sleeper Star: The crew fills in ably, but the applause and laughter are still spares, making it sound like a rehearsal instead of the actual show.

Most Pilot-y Line: Even though there’s a new set, it’s still the dark, blue-tinted, light-swirling aesthetic that the show introduced to the game show genre 21 years ago — even Kimmel jokes that it’s “the most dramatically-lit show in history.” At a certain point, you’d think there’d be time for an update. Even The Price Is Right zhuzhed things up a bit.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Kimmel makes an awesome Millionaire host, and the celebs are entertaining enough (their Smartest Person assistants are just as entertaining — with the possible exception of Dr. Drew). We just wish the show had come back with regular contestants, which would have been especially fun to watch during our collective lockdown.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

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