Looking For A New Series To Watch? Here’s One We Loved!
If you like game shows, 99 To Beat will grab your attention from the first episode and hold it all the way to the “hold your breath” finale.
Ever heard the term “doomscrolling?” It refers to endlessly scrolling through news or online content.
But I believe it also applies to endlessly scrolling through titles on streaming platforms, desperately trying to find something to watch. Most of the time I feel like we’re doomed before we even pick up the remote. Sometimes we just give up and read a book. Or play a game.
So on those rare occasions when we find something we’re interested in – and it doesn’t turn out to be awful – we get kind of excited.
We had that experience recently when we started watching the game show 99 To Beat.
The first episode of 99 To Beat begins with 100 contestants who are vying for the grand prize of one million dollars.
They must complete a number of different challenges each week to stay in the game. As they are frequently reminded by hosts Ken Jeong and Erin Andrews, “You don’t have to be first, you don’t have to be the best, but whatever you do, don’t finish last!”
Sometimes the challenges are (seemingly) simple, like dropping a coin into a shot glass in a bowl filled with water. But they can be a little diabolical, too. I’m surprised anyone was able to put out a candle flame with a syringe of water from at least twelve feet away. Whoever thought up these games had to be pretty creative.
Most of the games are done solo, but there are also a number of team challenges. When a team loses, several people can be eliminated at once.
The competition gets intense at times, but it doesn’t get ugly. Which we appreciated.
With very few exceptions, the contestants didn’t get obnoxious or cutthroat. In fact, as the season went on, they seemed to be building some close friendships. I loved to see how they cheered each other on. When they lost a challenge or were eliminated from the game, most of them left with dignity and grace.
It’s surprising how invested we got, and how much we cared who won or lost. The team challenges were hard, because sometimes people we really liked were on different teams and we didn’t know which one to root for. At the end we had very strong opinions about who we wanted to win the million!
The episodes moved along at a good pace without a lot of annoying down time.
It’s aggravating to us when a game show spends more time talking to the contestants or joking around than on the competition part. In 99 To Beat, it seemed like a good balance of commentary by hosts Ken and Erin, brief cameos of the contestants sharing about themselves, and the actual games.
There were ten episodes in the first season and each one was about forty-five minutes long. We’ll confess that we watched two or three at a time (“Should we watch one more?”). We probably should have stretched it out longer because we were sad to get to the end so quickly. Now we have to start “doomscrolling” for another series to watch.
You can watch 99 To Beat on a number of different streaming services including Hulu, Disney Plus, Fox One or Tubi. We’ll be on the lookout for Season Two!
Have you watched 99 To Beat? Did you like it as much as we did? Tell us why or why not. Or, if you have a favorite series you’d recommend, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
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