By
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - The quiz-show contestants stand in a semicircle. They look tense. The host is center stage, wearing black and an unveiled expression of contempt.
"You did marginally better than the first round," Anne Robinson chides the players. "Let me remind you, slow coaches and ditherers have no place on the team. It's time to vote off the weakest link."
And they do, forcing one of the humiliated band to shuffle away, a camera in their face and Robinson's tart words echoing as their TV epitaph: "You ARE the weakest link. Goodbye!"
Ouch. But that's entertainment, at least in Britain, where "Weakest Link" is a smash hit. Now, NBC is giving Americans their own version of the show that retains its prickly host, a London journalist turned TV star.
The network has lagged in matching competitors ABC ("Who Wants to be a Millionaire") and CBS ("Survivor") in the development of alternative shows, but it's betting big on "Weakest Link."
It needs to. While returning series like "The West Wing" and "Law & Order" have performed strongly for NBC, newcomers such as "Titans" and "First Years" wobbled and crashed.
The quiz show, debuting at 8 p.m. EST today, could deliver for NBC, one analyst said.
"I think it has a shot," said Paul Schulman of the media-buying firm Schulman/Advanswers. "Outside Fox's 'Boston Public,' nothing else is in the 8-9 p.m. hour. It has a shot to at least be a marginal hit."
Patterned closely on the British version but with heftier cash prizes, it's a kind of stagebound "Survivor": Players work with and against each other in pursuit of up to $1 million, winner take all.
Answering questions individually, contestants can collectively amass up to $125,000 each round. The group votes out one player at the end of a round, ultimately leaving two people in the fray.
But it's style, not substance, that sets "Weakest Link" apart. Like a one-woman hit squad, Robinson peppers the contestants with rapid-fire questions and high-caliber insults.
After one player flubbed a science question, Robinson politely asked his profession. He was a teacher, the man offered.
"You're actually a coordinator for science in the school," she replied, taking aim.
"I certainly am," he said.
"Are you sure about that?" Robinson curtly replied. Fire!
Draped in black designer garb that gives her the air of a chic Western gunslinger, her mouth pursed hard, Robinson breaks the mold of the blandly inoffensive TV personality.
Could bubbly Regis Philbin ever be so cold? Or courtly Alex Trebek?
That's their problem, suggests Robinson, 56, who argues she is the one taking the high ground.
"Quiz-show contestants are really very feisty and very sure of themselves, and it just would have been inappropriate and patronizing to treat them any other way," Robinson said in an interview.
As applied to "Weakest Link," it's an approach she believes makes for good television.
"It's feisty, it's fast, it's dramatic. It's a bit like a car crash, but you look anyway."
