But launching the reboot with an explicit celebrity bent is a deliberate choice that, unfortunately, feels about right for 2020. Now, as Kimmel points out early on, this isn’t the first time “Millionaire” has tried out an all-celebrity format in its winding journeys from primetime to syndication and back again Kimmel himself even competed. (The exception to that rule is Jane Fonda, a straightforward and decisive player, tapping comedian Louis Virtel in the third episode to help her he’s a friend of a friend, but also a former “Jeopardy” player who worships the ground Fonda walks on, making for a fun dynamic even if Fonda, no slouch when it comes to championing altruistic causes, is too focused on winning the game to notice.)

He sometimes gets a welcome assist in the form of a backup player of the celebrity’s choice - whom Kimmel introduces as “the smartest person you know” - which works well when that person has a tangible rapport with the player, as is the case with Will Forte and his father, Reb. That there can be no “ask the audience” lifeline only exacerbates this, as it becomes an “ask the host” option that puts even more pressure on Kimmel to play both host and spectator. It doesn’t help that, unfortunately, “Millionaire” started shooting without a studio audience as the coronavirus pandemic intensified.Ībsent a crowd to play off of, Kimmel, an otherwise solid choice for the host of a show that both wants to make its contestants comfortable and gently poke their weaker points, has trouble locking into the kind of rhythm - or indulging the kind of excruciatingly long “is that your final answer?” pauses - that once made Philbin so compelling. That alone cuts the show’s intrinsic tension in half. And since they’re celebrities playing for charity rather than to make themselves millionaires (as some of them already are), the questions remain relative softballs until the $125,000 mark. Its first contestant is even the perfect ABC tie-in of Eric Stonestreet, fresh off the “Modern Family” series finale. The first and most obvious deviation from the original iteration is that the contestants aren’t “people just like you,” but the established famous personalities and comedians that Kimmel has been entertaining on his late night show for years. Twenty years later, Jimmy Kimmel and ABC have now brought “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” back in a way that, despite an obvious reverence for the original show’s huge success, largely strips it of the appeal that first made it such a phenomenon to begin with.

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