Matter of ‘Trust’
The TV and film writers’ strike, which was due to hit when the writers’ contract expired at midnight Wednesday, could grease the skids for homegrown political pundit Tucker Carlson’s new game show to hit the air.
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In early September, Carlson taped six episodes of a new prime-time game show, “Who Do You Trust?” for CBS. An air date has not been set, but Carlson told us this week that the strike is “good news for all unscripted programming like reality and game shows.”
The new show has a bit of both. Throughout the course of each episode, the contestants learn about one another, and while they have to work together, “they can steal from each other at any time,” Carlson said. “But if they both steal, they both lose.”
Meanwhile, Carlson interviews the contestants about their lives, a number of whom burst into tears at his questioning. Not too surprising, because he said he had at his disposal camera crews in 27 states and a research staff that included an ex-CIA operative.
“It’s not like what I do in my day job,” he said. Apart from the massive scale of the production, he said “it was intensely demanding. You could wake me up from dead sleep and ask me about the presidential race and I could do 45 minutes without notes. But this is different.”
Apart from the uncertain air date, he’s not even positive how it will run: once per week or every night for six nights. CBS staff has finished editing the shows but not cutting them together.
In any case, he said, “I loved it. I did it for fun because I thought it would be interesting. But I loved it.” And, he added, “I was surprised at how quickly the ‘game show voice’ came to me.”
