Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Chase’ On ABC, A Quiz Show Where Contestants Face Off Against Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter And James Holzhauer

This edition of The Chaseis the second American version of a format that has been a hit in the UK for years; the first version aired from 2013-2015 on Game Show Network. The format is pretty straightforward: A team of three contestants go up against “The Chaser” who will try to keep them from banking money. Only in this version, The Chaser is one of the three greatest Jeopardy! champions of all time: Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer.

THE CHASE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of host Sara Haines alone on the stage of The Chase. She pays tribute to the late Alex Trebek before starting the show.

The Gist: To gather up money to bank, one of the three contestants answers a series of trivia questions in one minute. Each right answer puts $25,000 in the bank. Then they take what they earned to The Chaser (in the first episode, Jennings is The Chaser, with Rutter and Holzhauer watching from some cosmic-looking green room). The contestant and Chaser both answer the same trivia questions; a right answer by the contestant puts them one step closer to banking the money; a right answer by the Chaser puts them one step closer to where the contestant is.

The Chaser offers less money to get one step closer to the bank and significantly more to get one step further away from the bank. If the Chaser catches the contestant, the money disappears and the contestant is eliminated. Each of the three contestants go through the same nerve-wracking rounds of questions. Whoever is left gets to play the final round, where the banked money is the prize; in that round, they have to work together to answer as many questions as they can in 2 minutes. Then The Chaser gets another set of questions; if he catches up to the standard the contestants set, they get nothing. The contestants get a one-step advantage for as many people who are left, and if they steal a question The Chaser gets wrong, they can push him back one spot.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Chase sort of feels like a hybrid of Millionaire and Jeopardy!, but with questions tending more towards pop culture than history or science.

Our Take: The format of The Chase has been a popular one among game show fanatics because it holds so much potential for tension, excitement and big payoffs. The premiere episode of this new American version of The Chase didn’t deliver as much tension as we expected, and did drag in parts. But we do see the potential of the format, especially with the three Jeopardy! champions in place as Chasers.

The first episode bares out both the strengths and weaknesses of the format. The first of the three players who came out to face The Chaser, who even humblebragged about his high school valedictorian status and degree from Duke, fared so poorly that Jennings bulldozed over him in short order. The other two did better, showing how even when you face one of the Chasers on a massive roll — and Jennings answered all but one of the questions correctly in those banking rounds — you have to be on your toes to get that money in the bank.

In the Final Chase, the excitement factor ramps up. We had a quibble with having the contestants answer first, but we understood when we heard about the rule that a steal of a wrong answer by the Chaser pushes him back a spot. That rule completely changed how we saw that Final Chase and, while not pulse-pounding, made the show an exciting watch.

Haines, known mostly as a co-host of The View, is an amiable presence, who tries to make the contestants comfortable as well as provide banter for The Chaser to riff off of. Jennings was his usual dry and funny self, but it was fascinating seeing how much his answer process incorporates logic and induction. He doesn’t exactly know which celebrity voice Mark Zuckerberg used for his virtual home assistant, but the logic behind why he picked that answer makes too much sense. We figure Rutter and Holzhauer will be the same when they sit in The Chaser’s seat; funny and logical.

Parting Shot: At the end of the Final Chase, the contestants celebrate (at a safe distance, of course). Or does The Chaser celebrate?

Sleeper Star: We appreciate the set designers not making everything super-dark with spinning spotlights. The Chaser sits atop a massive screen showing the chase for the banked money, which is pretty impressive.

Most Pilot-y Line: Showing Rutter and Holzhauer reacting to the values Ken offers to move up or down the chase line, or their reactions to people’s trivia answers, felt superfluous and just served to remind us that they also are on the show. Though Rutter pretending to walk out after one Jennings response was pretty funny.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Chase could be slightly faster-paced, but the excitement of people going head-to-head with three of the best quiz show contestants in American television history is something game show aficionados can really sink their teeth into.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Chase On ABC.com