Stream It Or Skip It: 'The 1% Club' on Prime Video, a Patton Oswalt-hosted game show testing contestants' logic and reasoning, not trivia knowledge (2024)

The 1% Club, which premieres this week on Prime Video and will also air Mondays Fox starting June 3, does not seek to anoint new members of the most elite and wealthy echelon of society, no, the purpose of this show is to identify the 1% of people who can successfully answer some very tough riddles. Patton Oswalt hosts this game show, adapted from its British counterpart, where 100 contestants answer a series of logic-based questions and are whittled down one after another until only the final few remaining battle it out to see who can answer a question that, statistically, only 1% of people can answer. The show is fun to play along with, but falls short of being an addictive new part of the zeitgeist.

THE 1% CLUB: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Patton Oswalt stands in the middle of a set, surrounded by 100 contestants. “Have you ever wondered if you’re the smartest person in the room? Your office? Maybe even your hometown?” he asks. Well, we’re going to find out who the smartest person in this room is, at least.

The Gist: The 1% Club on Prime Video is an American version of a well-loved British game show that pits 100 contestants against each other by asking them questions requiring logic, reasoning, and common sense (as opposed to trivia and useless pop culture, which are, specifically, my bag) to see which person can deduce the correct answer most often.

During every episode, the contestants are given $1,000 and they are asked a series of increasingly more difficult questions (for instance, question #1 is something that roughly 90% of the population could answer correctly, leading up to the final question which is, in theory, so hard that only 1% of people will be able to get right.) If a contestant gets an answer wrong, they’re eliminated from the competition and their $1,000 goes into a prize pot.

As the show progresses, a few new rules are added. After a few questions, contestants are allowed to use their money to buy a free pass, which is the ability to skip a question they don’t know the answer to. After a few more questions, anyone who’s left is allowed to take their $1,000 home and bow out of the game.

At the very end of the episode, anyone who has survived all the way to the very last question is then given the option to split a pot of $10,000 equally (in the first episode, there are two final contestants, so they could either both agree to take home $5,000 each, or risk that and go for the grand prize, which is valued up to$100,000, depending on how many people are eliminated from the show.) If there are multiple people who guess the answer to the 1% question correctly, they get to split the grand prize pot at the end.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As the money pot grows and the stakes are raised through the show, there’s a Deal or No Deal aspect to the show, but instead of winning due to probability and chance, contestants have to answer questions that feel reminiscent of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

Our Take: The premise of The 1% Club is basically Highlights For Children Magazine: The Game Show. (I look forward to it’s future iteration, Highlights For Children Magazine: The Game Show: The Musical starring Josh Gad as Patton Oswalt.) Most of the questions involve solving brain teasers and riddles, word scrambles, or identifying a pattern, whether it’s a word, number, or pictures. While some require more mental energy than others, some of them feel tricky or worded in a way that are bound to trip up even the most smartest of us all.

The thing about so many game shows is that most of us at home tend to think, “I could be on this show,” and The 1% Club has heard you loud and clear. If you download the 1% Club app, you can play along to see how you compare to the contestants on the show which is a fun element, maybe honestly more fun than watching the whole show itself. That’s because, while Oswalt is a genial host, he feels like he’s playing it safe – a shame, because he’s funnier than this show allows him to be. The contestants also feel… off. While I think they’re all just average folks, there’s a very performative energy in the room, like everyone is “on” at all times. While we get to know a few of them through their banter with Oswalt, there’s no emotional heft when one of them is eliminated and, there’s no real tension, a feeling that prime time shows like Deal or No Deal or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? were so good at conveying. That’s not to say this show isn’t fun to watch, but it feels more like a fun party game, not necessarily appointment television.

Parting Shot: At the end of the first episode, two contestants compete to answer the 1% question. No spoilers.

Memorable Dialogue: “What would you do with the $100,000 if you won?” Oswalt asks several of the contestants throughout the first episode. The answers range from personal (“I would build myself a luxury horse barn,” one woman says) to philanthropic (one man who teaches science said he would fund field trips for his students) to comical, as one contestant, Kyle, says, “Since you need a villain, I would bulldoze a community rec center. And maybe, like, build a high rise for the elite.” Maybe this show is about the top 1% after all!

Our Call: As a parent, I would absolutely watch The 1% Club with my elementary school-aged kids who love riddles and word games with a passion. In fact, I think a kids version of this game might even be more appealing, partly because many adults might overthink the types of questions on the show and it seems like something kids would enjoy playing along with. For some family fun, STREAM IT!

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.