Over at Fox News, their undisputed star is Greg Gutfeld. The man who has been a proven commodity for years has only grown bigger of late. He helms the biggest show in cable news (“The Five”) and has the top-rated late-night talk show (“Gutfeld!”, which routinely beats the established network shows). Now he is poised to take over game shows too!

Okay, admittedly that is an unlikely result, but only because he has landed into a premise that is among the most unlikely to pull off from the standpoint of game shows, at least with any regularity. “Greg Gutfeld’s What Did I Miss,” debuting today on the Fox Nation streaming platform, is about as high-concept as a television contest can get. Gutfeld himself opens by declaring, “This is possibly the strangest game show ever created,” and that would at the least avoid hyperbole.

The premise involves taking four contestants (a fifth seemingly dropped out midway) and placing them in a remote house with no contact to the outside world, for three months, and then quizzing them on the current events that have transpired. The players are faced with a series of challenges in which they are given headlines, news stories, and other details on current events and need to determine what is real and what is - literally - fake news. 

The players were ensconced in a remote home in northern New York State, with no cell phones, computers, or internet. They began to bide their time in the days just ahead of President Trump’s inauguration, and come to the New York City studio with headphones and masks, completely cut off from society until showtime. Already you can see this will be a tough challenge to replicate going forward. 

The contest begins with them being given news stories and then agreeing as a group on the accuracy of the content, in order to build up a pool of cash. Along with Gutfeld, he has two regulars from his nighttime program to assist – Kat Timpf and Jamie Lissow. They serve as spin merchants, alternately attempting to sway the players on the stories. Also appearing in video clips are various Fox personalities delivering news segments that need to be weighed by the contestants.

Interspersed between questions are other segments shot on location during the prior months, lending a peek into the conditions they were living in. They lived comfortably in a nicely appointed home, although without any of the digital stimulation we are accustomed to. Reading, cooking, watching movies, resorting to craft projects or playing video games were shown as distractions. Gutfeld says they were essentially as fossilized as Mitch McConnell.

That challenge from the standpoint of the audience is that we are already familiar with many of the stories. The interest is in watching them as they grapple with the veracity of the news presented, hammering out logical conclusions while coming into this completely blind. The format is not as regimented as traditional game shows, with plenty of commentary and comedy tossed around, including coming from the contestants. 

There is plenty of interplay between Gutfeld, his panel, and the players, and there is also the unique - though inevitable - connection all the contestants clearly share. This all makes for a truly unique product in the circus tent of game shows; the content, format, and execution are all different from what you may have seen before.

“Greg Gutfeld’s What Did I Miss” is showing exclusively on Fox Nation.

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