Celebrity Name Game

Australian show only.............. Great show, great concept, fun for the whole family, but with Grant DENYER as host, it's brilliant! The show was made for his talents. Well done Grant DENYER and also the fantastic nightly parade of celebrities who get exposure and join in on the laughs. Two thumbs up to you all.

I'm a game show fan since way back when and since there are so few left, I'm saddened that yet another one bites the dust.

True they won't win any Nobel Prizes for this show but it's not about that.

It's cheesy, sometimes-raunchy (usually a couple of bleeps in every episode) game show fun that is one of my guilty pleasures which fill up my DVR.

Bon voyage Craig.

Perhaps you and Mr. Arquette can whip up another game show gem for us to enjoy.

Thanks for the TV fun.

The fastest game show on TV, "Celebrity Name Game" pits two teams of two players against each other in trying (mostly) to name celebrities from clues given, mostly verbal. Along the way, they are assisted by two celebrities and by the host, Craig Ferguson, himself.

The pace is so lively, they manage to squeeze four rounds into a half hour. In round one, teams get $100 for each correct answer. The stakes double in round two. In round three, Craig supplies the clues while the teams compete simultaneously. The team that wins moves on to round four where they can win $20,000 if they guess all ten names (and other things) correctly.

The contestants are obviously chosen for their enthusiasm and aptitude. The celebrities are usually good players themselves. And Craig is his wacky self, though somewhat constrained by the structure of the show.

Where I live, they play two episodes back to back every weekday evening before primetime, where there is little competition.

I miss this show so much. The perfect daytime escape. The celeb guests were fun, great format. This show needs to come back. It needs to be in prime access.

Celebrity Name Game comes across as a rather obvious cash in on Hollywood Game Night, with minor celebrities paired up with contestants in a name guessing game. Craig Ferguson brings a bit of charisma to the proceedings, but not enough to save the show.

One major problem is that the same game is played over and over, with little variation in how the game is played or in the challenge level. The only difference between games is who is giving clues and who is trying to guess the celebrity. There is no real sense of suspense, as the names are often easy to guess for anyone remotely good at this type of game.

Moreover, in terms of its guests, the show uses the term "celebrity" very loosely. In the two shows I watched, one featured two B-list actresses from the late 1990s, while the other featured a television actor I'd never heard of. (Although I was surprised to see they got Sheryl Crow-I think she's friends with Courtney Cox, who's an executive producer of the show.) Craig Ferguson does his best to make the proceedings interesting, bringing the same sense of humor he had on The Late Late Show. However, there is only so much he can do with something as dull as this. At one point, he was reduced to openly feeding a contestant an answer when they got stuck on a name.