Ever since 30 Rock sadly wrapped things up in 2013, there’s been an Alec Baldwin-shaped hole in the world of television and in the hearts of red-blooded Americans everywhere. Search as we may, there’s no gravel-voiced alpha male with the “hair of a lion” and “eyes like pools of ice water” that can compare to the former Jack Donaghy. NBC and Baldwin may have gone their separate ways, but today brings the news from Vulture that Baldwin will return to TV once again, this time on ABC, to host a revival of the long-dormant ’70s game show Match Game starting June 26.
Challenging a team of regular-people contestants to guess how a rotating panel of celebrity guests will answer fill-in-the-blanks with a comedic slant, Match Game entertained living room audiences throughout the ’60s and ’70s, bouncing from network to network in an assortment of revivals afterward. NBC ran a season, ABC ran a season, CBS aired a Match Game mini-round as part of their Gameshow Marathon, and now ABC has taken a similar strategy to their programming. Baldwin’s Match Game will run as one block in their “Sunday Fun & Games” lineup, which will also include Steve Harvey’s Celebrity Family Feud, as well as a new reincarnation of The $100,000 Pyramid. (Once known as The $10,000 Pyramid, but now adjusted for inflation.)
Like its predecessors, the new Match Game will cast Baldwin as the straight man against a deep roster of celebrity cut-ups, taking cues from recent Celebrity Game Night and Spike’s Lip Sync Battle program. In the original iteration of the show, comedians Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly delighted and scandalized audiences with their randy double entendres. Baldwin’s got no shortage of famous pals, but many of them still roll with NBC’s crew. Audiences can expect plenty of cross-promotion with established ABC properties, so the smart money’s on Scandal‘s Kerry Washington coming by at some point.
