For weeks I saw the advertisements on television. I thought it was a sci fi drama in the same vein as Six Million Dollar Man, with liberal dollups of Superman and Battlestar Galactica thrown in. I reasoned it was an epic series about Superman's long-lost home planet of Krypton. I couldn't wait for the premiere. The teaser ads were very dramatic, people running in slow motion, space-age jumpsuits, ominous music, etc...

The night I turned on the TV to watch, I felt a sense of disappointment and anger that has lasted to this day. There was DICK CLARK! Of all people! Where was Superman? And this was a GAME SHOW!!! And a TERRIBLE game show at that -- something like 'Battle of the Network Stars,' but without Kate Jackson. How could Superman let something like this happen?

The gods were kind -- it was cancelled within a handful of days. But Dick Clark, as we are all just starting to realise now, is inhuman, immortal, and goddamned unstoppable. And he returned twenty years later with another load of prime time tripe called 'Winning Lines,' which is nothing like 'Battle of the Network Stars,' especially without the stars or the bathing suits or Kate Jackson.

I love Dick Clark because of American Bandstand (the 70s incarnation -- possibly the campiest pail of schlock to ever spill into my living room). But I will never forgive him for the Krypton Factor.  And neither, I think, would Kate Jackson.

The game show genre features TV series with contestants competing against each other in various challenges, tasks, or quizzes to win prizes or rewards. Game shows are designed to engage viewers by presenting exciting and often competitive scenarios that involve participants using their knowledge, skills, and strategies to outperform their opponents and win.

Bill Barretta and Pat Sajak in Wheel of Fortune (1983)

With the aim of finding the 'perfect human', this show ran contestants through a wide variety of competitions, designed to test knowledge, memory, reflexes, strength, endurance and coordination. The final winner of the tournament was awarded a prize of $50,000 in gold.

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The Krypton Factor

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