Showoffs

Short-lived ABC Game Show by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman which pit two contestants, each paired with two celebrity teammates. One team was sequestered out of sight, while the other split up between "actors" and "guesser". The actors mimed up to six words in 60 seconds for the guesser to identify. Afterward, the other team came out and communicated the same words. The team with the highest score won the game, and best-of-three won the match.

In the Bonus Round, the celebs acted out a series of words to the contestant in 60 seconds, with $1 awarded for each. After this, the player got another 15 seconds and three words; each one guessed added a zero to the amount earned beforehand, for a possible payout of more than $10,000.

The series probably shouldn't have gone to air (see below), but debuted on June 30, 1975 at 12:00 PM Eastern (replacing Password ABC) and ran until December 26. In late 1983, Goodson found success with a tweaked format, Body Language.

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Game Show Tropes in use:

• Bonus Round
• Home Game: Sort of. A board game with this format was issued in '75 with Lucille Ball on the cover, but in a fun bit of irony was called Body Language.
• Personnel:
  • The Announcer: Gene Wood.
  • Game Show Host: Larry Blyden did the pilot, Bobby Van did the series.
• Show the Folks At Home

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This show provides examples of:

• Expy: The core concept, in the game show genre, dates back to the late 1940s and Pantomime Quiz.
• Hey, It's That Sound: The "clang" heard for correct guesses was later used on Family Feud.
• Opening Narration: "Places, please...it's curtain time for the Showoffs!"
• What Could Have Been: Blyden was killed in a Morocco car accident a few days before the show was to begin taping. Rather than air repeats or new shows of Password (or, for that matter, any of ABC's other games), Showoffs went ahead anyway and network promos were re-edited to remove video or audio of him.