Review: Trivial Pursuit (CW, 2024)

I adore trivia. However, you won’t find me playing in any online quiz leagues or actively tracking my stats as I venture from pub quiz to pub quiz. I guess I would describe myself as a voracious fan of casual trivia. No knock at all on the many talented hardcore quizzers I know and have met in my travels; I just don’t find the joy that others have found in the pursuit of trivia mastery. Trivia, for me, is like bowling—I have fun playing it, I get hype when I knock ‘em all down, but I’m not out there to dominate or achieve a personal best score. I enjoy trivia when it’s colorful, engaging, and accessible. These qualities, in my opinion, are the greatest strengths of The CW’s new Trivial Pursuit (Sundays at 8pm EST).

Similar to previous attempts at porting the board game to television—the Family Channel version in the early 90s, the syndicated version with Skyped-in question setters and the guy from The Brady Bunch hosting in 2008—Trivial Pursuit ‘24 tasks three contestants with conquering the six iconic color-coded categories. Gone, however, are the interactive play-along elements that distracted from the main conceit of the game’s previous TV iterations. This time around, it’s all about the material. The questions—which are challenging, but not so challenging as to intimidate casual viewers—are asked and answered at a sufficiently brisk pace. The format of each round is also pleasingly straightforward—answer correctly, earn points, get wedges to fill your game pie. In total, it’s a game that I found to be easy and fun to play along with.

The set, constructed in the round with Trivial Pursuit’s iconic game board center stage, is gorgeous. The black floor and swirling lights, de rigeur for big serious million-dollar game shows since 2000, belie a fun, cozy Q&A game here, the likes of which are hard to find on TV these days. In fact, fans of digital party games might notice that the vibe of the show is quite similar to that of Trivial Pursuit Live!, the current multi-platform software version of TP. The video game is a clear influence on the presentation of this series, and is a welcome source of inspiration.

LeVar Burton (my personal choice to replace the late Alex Trebek as host of Jeopardy around the time that discussion began) does a fine job of moving the game along and keeping viewers abreast of the competition. His delivery and cadence reminds me of Alex’s if it were slowed down by, like, 5% or so. While LeVar’s voice and patter are no doubt comforting, I occasionally found myself wishing he’d pick up the pace just a bit.

At the end of the day, Trivial Pursuit on the CW is a game show worthy of its illustrious namesake. Fans of the board game, and casual party-style trivia games in general, will feel right at home here. Minor quibbles about LeVar’s hosting aside, I found that the pace of the show and the quality of the material lend themselves well to yelling out the answers at the TV—and after all, isn’t that the mark of a truly great quiz show?