It's just a bored game

NBC's new game "Identity" may be hazardous to your health. If you watch the five episodes that air this week, you might be bored to death.

Heck, if you watch tonight's premiere (8 p.m., Ch. 5) you might be bored to death.

This is the worst game show on TV. And that's in a TV schedule that includes ABC's dreadful "Show Me the Money."

At least you can derive some entertainment out of laughing at (not with) "Money." "Identity," on the other hand, is colossally awful from beginning to end.

As is the case with "Deal or No Deal," you don't have to be a rocket scientist to play "Identity." The contestant is faced with 12 strangers and a list of 12 characteristics — what their job is, how young they are, that they donated a kidney.

And this is no "To Tell the Truth," where part of the game was to try to fool contestants into believing people were someone they were not. Some of the 12 strangers might just as well be wearing signs around their neck declaring exactly who or what they are.

It's like putting a guy with a wooden leg, eye patch and parrot on his shoulder onstage and asking the contestant to tell us which one is the pirate.

Or, as in tonight's premiere, you tell the contestant that one of the strangers is the creator of Spider-Man; Stan Lee is clearly twice as old as anybody else; Spider-Man has been around for quite a while; how do you not figure that out rather easily?

And if the game itself wasn't lame enough, host Penn Jillette is about as sincere as ... well, as a two-bit game-show host. This is a guy who has built a career (as half of the comedy/magic act Penn and Teller) on being abrasive and abusive — now he's suddenly putting his arm around contestants and giving them love?

I watched the first hour with people who had never heard of Penn and Teller, and they found him similarly unconvincing.

If nothing else, Teller's performance on "Identity" will give you a whole new appreciation for just how good Howie Mandel is on "Deal or No Deal." There's a certain talent to a job like this — hey, Bob Barker is an American institution on "The Price Is Right" — but not everybody has that talent.

The producers and host of "Identity" try to create tension with dramatic pauses, lighting and music, but it's about as tense as watching the puffy clouds sail by on a beautiful afternoon.

And that would be far more exciting than "Identity." It's dull, dull, dull.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com