I've decided I like the new version of I've Got a Secret airing on GSN. Well, let me clarify that: I like the show. I don't like the schedule.
I don't like that they run the same episodes over and over without telling us which ones are reruns. My TiVo has no way of differentiating so it keeps recording episodes I watched the day before. I also don't like the fact that GSN took off the black-and-white reruns of the original Garry Moore version so they could air the same episodes of the new version an extra time. Come on, GSN. In some parts of the country, it's 3 AM in the friggin' morning. You don't need to stick an extra run of one of your new shows there. Give us back our classic Secret.
But I like the show. In case you haven't seen it, Bil Dwyer is the host and the panel consists, for reasons I won't pretend to understand, of four openly-gay performers. All I can imagine is that someone said to someone else, "Hey, you know why Hollywood Squares worked? Because Paul Lynde was gay. Let's get four gay people." As it happens, they got some pretty funny gay people, especially Frank DeCaro and Suzanne Westenhoefer, and they're all good game players.
There are celebrity guests — my TiVo's getting sick of the one with Adam West — and unlike the old show, they actually come on with actual secrets. At least one guest per episode demonstrates an unusual skill or physical feat, and Dwyer keeps things moving nicely. So it's a worthy successor to the original series, and it's refreshing that no one felt the need to completely reinvent and modernize the wheel. They kept what worked and wrapped it in a nice, new package.
One of the producers is Burt DuBrow, a gent I've enjoyed chatting with on several occasions, usually about Howdy Doody. Burt is the world's foremost authority on that classic series, having been a close friend of Buffalo Bob's. At the end of I've Got a Secret, when they show the producers' production company logos, you can see an item from his collection…the little box that Clarabell Clown wore on his belt. If I owned something that neat, I'd show it off, too.