Celebrity Name Game is an American syndicated game show hosted by Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson. It premiered in September 2014 and in December 2016 it was announced that it would end after its third season.
The show is based on the board game Identity Crisis and has a fairly familiar format. Two teams of two contestants each (team members are friends or family members) are joined by two guest celebrities who help them for the first two of three rounds. The teams use pantomime and clues to try to help each other identify celebrities and fictional characters. Winning teams can earn up to $20,000 in an episode.
I finally saw an episode of Celebrity Name Game a couple of nights ago, and my lord that was a train wreck.
I like Craig Ferguson as a talk show host, and he's fine here. His tenure on the show has earned him two Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Game Show Host. But I'm glad to hear that the show is ending, because I feel it's a clear and present threat to Ferguson's sobriety. Many people would need to drink to cope with the level of painful cluelessness the contestants displayed. In short: these folks would never be on Jeopardy!
I'm sure money has worked as a significant buffer for Ferguson, but nonetheless, wow. In the episode I watched, he was trying to get a team to guess Javier Bardem and was handing them super-obvious clues, and they only finally got it when he said "His name rhymes with Bavier Hardem."
Here's another exchange I watched in a round in which the topic was words that start with the letter A:
Contestant 1: "This is the fish you get on a Caesar salad!"
Contestant 2: "Artichoke!"
Contestant 1: "No, it's a fish!"
Contestant 2: "Um, pass!"