Revisiting and ranking the primetime game shows of 1999-2000

[BrandonFG]

Watching a friend's Twitch stream tonight, he showed an episode of Winning Lines which I always thought was underrated with a kick ass end game. Wonderwall is Top 3 IMO.

Anyway it led me to thinking...of the Big-4 primetime games of 2000, how do you rank the five shows? I'm not counting one-off specials like Challenge of the Child Geniuses.

1. Millionaire, the obvious favorite. It became watercooler television for a reason.

2. Winning Lines. Before tonight this was one of those shows that I really only watched for its end game but the qualifying rounds are actually pretty cleverly structured. I could easily see it working as a syndicated or even GSN show, although Wonderwall deserves way more than 10K but less than $1 million. Maybe 50 or 100K?

3. Greed. It's still a fun show to watch, but I was never a big fan of The Terminator especially with teammates involved.

4. Twenty One. Of all the shows, this one seemed the most eager to take the crown of biggest money winner and it felt like it was trying too hard to recreate the drama of the 1950s.

5. It's Your Chance of a Lifetime. I'd argue it was the most forgettable of the primetime genre in general, not just 2000.

[Kevin Prather]

My ranking is probably the same as yours, Brandon. I go back and forth on whether I rank Greed above or below Winning Lines.

Winning Lines often gets criticized for its "Sudden Death"/"Looking After Number One" round. I think an easy fix for the round would be to let the remaining 49ers hang around for a while. Lose in Sudden Death, go back to the 49ers and try again. Not unlike UK Deal or No Deal.

[Ian Wallis]

4. Twenty One. Of all the shows, this one seemed the most eager to take the crown of biggest money winner

You're right, but at times they all seemed to be in a race to claim that title.  Greed had the "Million Dollar Moments" and for a while became Super Greed .  WWTBAM made certain stacks much easier - even I could have answered John Carpenter's stack without using all three lifelines.  Amazing stuff at the time though.  Now, it seems winning a million dollars on one of these shows is no big deal because it's happened so often.

[Ian Wallis]

My ranking:


1.  Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  Like others, I was captivated by this show, eagerly watching (sometimes on the edge of my seat) and anticipating what was going to happen next.  Regis was great at taking a dramatic moment and making us all laugh.  I didn't miss an episode until sometime in the second year - and that was purely by accident because that particular night I didn't even know it was on (ABC moved it around the schedule frequently).

2.  Twenty-One.  Maybe too high of a ranking on some lists but I really liked this version and was disappointed when it didn't last longer.  Maybe they tried a bit too hard and I guess one problem is some of the questions were way too easy for the amount of money they were offering, but it's still a compelling show in the way it was presented.

3.  Greed.  I must admit it took me a while to warm up to this.  I remember the first terminator when Curtis Warren eliminated another contestant and you could see she was slightly devastated by this.  You just didn't see this kind of thing on any show that came before.  I continued to watch though and really looked forward to seeing this every week.

4.  Winning Lines.  I agree with what the others have said - the end game was fabulous.  Too bad the main game wasn't nearly as interesting.

5.  It's Your Chance of a Lifetime.  Obvious WWTBAM ripoff.  I watched every episode of its one week on the air.  I would have been OK with it continuing beyond that, but it's surprising how many times they tried to rip the original format off.


It was an exciting time that I remember well.  Game shows came back in a big way at the end of the '90s to have them in primetime almost every night was great!

[PYLclark86]

1. Millionaire: No reason.

2. Winning Lines: Honestly, this has been the only non-Millionaire show that I occasionally go back and watch. The Wonderwall pretty much carries this here, plus the excellent music package and Dick Clark's hosting. (I often wonder if you would fill the half hour with a few rounds of the Wonderwall instead of the rest of the show. One thing's for sure, you probably can't fill CBS' bank accounts doing that.)

3. Twenty-One: Every show had Millionaire syndrome, but Twenty-One had it hard. The three strikes rule and the "drag a friend kicking and screaming into the studio" feature did nothing for me. The bonus game was uninspiring.

4. Greed: The more I look back on this show the more I dislike it. The cutthroat atmosphere turns me off and the material relied too heavily on "According to a survey which of these objects smells like feet?" type questions.

5. Being Eaten By Wolves

6. Hit By a Car

217. Being Eaten By Meaner, Fatter Wolves

321. Hit By a Car Driven by Wolves

451. It's Your Chance of a Lifetime: No thanks!

[SamJ93]

4. Greed: The more I look back on this show the more I dislike it. The cutthroat atmosphere turns me off and the material relied too heavily on "According to a survey which of these objects smells like feet?" type questions.

My hot take: if they had gotten rid of the survey questions and and team captains (which made it way too easy to lose in the early rounds because they rejected a correct answer), it would've easily been the second-best of the bunch after WWTBAM.

5. Being Eaten By Wolves

6. Hit By a Car

217. Being Eaten By Meaner, Fatter Wolves

321. Hit By a Car Driven by Wolves

451. It's Your Chance of a Lifetime: No thanks!

I mean, it certainly wasn't great, but was it really that awful? It had two interesting twists that set it apart from WWTBAM (open-ended questions and wagering one's score) and Gordon Elliott is a very underrated host IMHO. The only thing I really disliked about it was the random "pay off your credit card debt" question at the start of each game.

[JasonA1]

I think the big thing in retrospect about IYCOAL (even the initialism annoys me) is that it just didn't need to be done. Greed took a lot of what made Millionaire popular and pumped-it up FOX style, adding new layers and intrigue, etc. That's one way to join a trend, and make yourself stand out and gain viewers in the process. Twenty One took a (semi-?)recognizable title, and had the isolation booths built in to the format, so it immediately looked different from the other shows. Winning Lines had 49 contestants.

Lifetime felt like it was just "here's our Host Sits Across From a Person Answering Questions show" with little else to entice the average viewer.

-Jason

[BrandonFG]

Now, it seems winning a million dollars on one of these shows is no big deal because it's happened so often.

I forgot who said this, but years ago someone here had the sig. "One million dollars is the new $10,000" and it makes sense. I like that some of the newer primetime shows remembered that 25 or 50K is still damn good money in 2026.

2. Winning Lines: Honestly, this has been the only non-Millionaire show that I occasionally go back and watch. The Wonderwall pretty much carries this here, plus the excellent music package and Dick Clark's hosting. (I often wonder if you would fill the half hour with a few rounds of the Wonderwall instead of the rest of the show.

Going with the 100K top prize I proposed upthread, someone once proposed a qualifying round similar with just the seven players. I suppose you could assign them an arbitrary number and ask questions related to them, or just do a straight elimination contest similar to Hit Man. Or maybe just ask multiple-choice questions of the gallery until one remains.

Both may require a name change tho.

Anyone know how much the WL set cost to build? I imagine the contestant gallery cost a grip by itself.

[TLEberle]

Winning line referred to the balls that came out of the lottery bins, and there are 49 players for 49 numbers. It made no sense over here without the tie in.

[Joe Mello]

Yeah the thing with Winning Lines is that all of the design decisions were based on the UK National Lottery, from the choice of using 49 players and 49 answers, to drawing 6 numbers to play each week, and using those 6 numbers to help find new contestants for the subsequent week. If all you're married to is the Text Mural of Doom, you could do whatever you want to get there.

I'd put Winning Lines and Twenty-One on similar levels in that they are fully formed and realized games. I think Greed is a little too slight for what it wanted to be, but in this age where reality competitions are leaning harder in the social aspects of the game, I could see some ascended form of Greed being successful.

[Casey Buck]

I always felt that if Now You See It ever got revived for some reason (and if Fremantle could somehow get the rights from Stone-Stanley/Sony), the Wonderwall would be a hell of an upgrade from the Solo Round for a bonus round. It has the same "all of the answers are right in front of your eyes, if you can find them" premise as the front game, with a intense twist. Play it for 1/10th the stakes as BFG said above (so, a $250-$100K money ladder), and maybe have 10 questions in 90 seconds, instead of 20 questions in 3 minutes if time is a concern?

To me, it's a damn shame that such a good bonus round got wasted on a show that had a lame front game, and that lasted all of 6 weeks in the US.

[doctorwho]

My two cents:

1. Millionaire: It's elegant in its simplicity, especially in that early era before we got eleventy gazillion celebrity specials and gimmicks. Just captivating television, through and through.

(Significant gap here between Millionaire and the rest of the list.)

2. Greed: Ultimately I appreciate it because it put its own grittier spin on the million-dollar craze, and did pretty well with it. But yeesh, the team-slayer survey questions are something else. Truth be told, it got to be a matter of which one of these I was least uncomfortable putting in second, and this did it.

3. Winning Lines: If it were just the Wonderwall, this'd be second place for me, easy. The overall format, I think, works a lot better in the original British version where 1) the contestants were folks who got lucky enough to have their phone numbers match last week's picks as opposed to that being a home sweepstakes afterthought and 2) you're playing for a trip around the world -- in that version the first couple rounds are a good buildup for that kind of prize. Here? It doesn't feel like enough when you're going to be playing for a million dollars at the end of the road. That said, Dick Clark is great, and the show is still a decent package.

4. Twenty-One: This is the one of the bunch I wish I could like more than I do. I love the atmosphere of those early episodes, especially with the live orchestra. I feel like the raw format can have plenty of drama! As it is, they sucked out so much of the originality out of it with the multiple choice questions and the second chance option (and then by getting rid of the live music and switching to bland over-the-top orchestral tracks). More than that, though, I loathe the strike system because of all the anticlimaxes it led to. You shouldn't be able to win $200K just because your opponent got cocky and struck out in two questions -- at least you should have to work for it a bit. And Perfect 21 is an afterthought all around.

5. Chance of a Lifetime: If ever there was "we have Millionaire at home," this is it.

[davidhammett]

Disclaimer: I worked on Greed as resident math boy, cueing Chuck with the amounts each player had won or was playing for.  I also get to claim a small credit for what eventually became the Terminator, as up until that point in the development of the game the elimination of players was required, which I noted wasn't exactly the essence of greed.  That said...

1.  Millionaire
2.  Greed
3.  Winning Lines
4.  Twenty-One

Of the four, Greed and Winning Lines are hardest for me to arrange.  Several of Greed's questions leaned heavily toward polls, while Winning Lines' second round of questions were written deviously (e.g., "if you add one") to trick players into buzzing in early.