Review: Small Fortune

Small Fortune debuted on NBC earlier this summer and the show just finished it's six episode run. The show is a US adaptation of the British show with the same name. The British version ran for six episodes and was cancelled, so it was a bit strange when NBC picked up it in April 2019. NBC sat on the pickup for a while and then finally, it went into production in late 2020.

Overall, I don't think the show is all that bad. Lil Rel Howery does a solid job as host. The set, despite no audience, looked pretty cool. However, most of the gameplay is kind of boring. A team of three plays 5 pint-sized games, each one increasing in money. Only one person from the team plays each game. You get one practice at the game, then each practice after that costs money. When you are ready to play, you push a blinking red button and play for whatever money is left in that round.

That gameplay style is part of my issue with the show. More time is spent throughout the show with a contestant "practicing" than actually playing for money. The games themselves are well designed and pretty cool and they did have quite a variety of games despite it only being six episodes. However, the gameplay needs to be fixed up. 

The shows final game "Big Little Heist" doesn't seem terribly hard, but it was only won once in the six episodes. The show's ratings weren't great, but they also weren't terrible for summer standards. The show was consistently at an 0.3 demo with right around 1.5 million viewers. While I'm not expecting NBC to renew the show for a second season, it wouldn't be a complete surprise if it was renewed. It may benefit from a slightly better timeslot, as a lot of game shows don't tend to do well in that 10/9c slot. Sound off in the comments. What did you think? It looks like NBC will re-run a few episodes on Sundays once the Olympics finishes so there will be time to catch up if you missed it.