Stream It Or Skip It: 'The Quiz With Balls' on Fox, where people answer questions to keep from being bumped into water by huge rubber balls (2024)

Hey, do you like big rubber balls? And watching people get hit with them? Do you like watching the people getting hit with those balls falling into a pool of water fully-clothed? Then we’ve got a game show for you!

THE QUIZ WITH BALLS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of host Jay Pharoah and of contestants being bumped into a pool of water by giant rubber yellow balls.

The Gist: Besides constant “balls” wordplay, the giant yellow balls are the big “feature” of The Quiz With Balls. Two families of five face each other in this new game show, with Pharoah as host. Each family picks from one of ten question categories, and they’re presented with a question that has five right answers and one wrong one. Each family member stands on an answer they think is right.

Then Pharoah yells “Release the balls!” and the yellow balls go down a slide. If a person is standing on a right answer, the ball is blocked at the bottom of the slide. If a person is standing on a wrong answer, the ball bumps that person into a pool of water below, and that person is out for the rest of the episode. For each right answer, the family adds a certain amount of money to their banks.

In each round, the amount for each right answer increases. And for every family member that’s bumped into the drink, a wrong answer is added to the next question’s list of answers. So if three family members are left, there are three wrong answers, and so on. The last family standing, either with the most money, a dry family member, or both, gets to keep their accumulated pot and goes to the bonus round.

In the bonus round, the family representative (or, if only one person is left, the remaining family member) is presented a question with five right answers and one wrong one. One at a time, they walk to the answer that they think is right and hope that the ball doesn’t bump them into the pool. If they get all five right answers, the family wins $100,000.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Quiz With Balls is sort of like Family Feud crossed with the part of Holey Moley where people fall into freezing pools of water. It’s produced by the company that created The Voice and Big Brother, with the original version airing in The Netherlands.

Our Take: Let’s face it; the big reason why anyone would watch The Quiz With Balls is to see people being bumped into the water by huge rubber balls. There isn’t really much in the way of gameplay besides that, and there is absolutely no strategy involved besides outlasting the other team.

Pharoah is game as host, filling in time with some of his patented impressions and other funny lines, but there is far too much filler in this show. We get a little gentle trash-talking between the families, and then we see the family members consulting with each other as to which answers to stand on top of. Then Pharoah repeats the answers they chose, and only then are the balls released. If anything screams that the show is a 30-minute format extended to an hour, it’s repetition and stretching of dramatic moments.

Sleeper Star: We do appreciate the design of the giant slides with the massive balls on them.

Most Pilot-y Line: That being said, the design of the original version’s set was much more colorful and whimsical than this version’s set design, which leans on the same tired Who Wants To Be A Millionaire template that American TV hasn’t been able to shake for the last quarter-century.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Sure, it’s fun watching people get hit by giant balls and falling into a pool of water. But that’s pretty much all there is to The Quiz With Balls, and the filler is so obvious that it is going to frustrate even the most casual viewer.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.