Saw this premiering on the Canadian version of E!; it appears to be (http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Quiz+Cercle+comes+rest+Canada/9121489/story.html\'>and in fact, is) the English-Canadian version of La Cercle, which was the daily French-Canadian version of La Cible, which was originally piloted as \"Face Off\" for Fox. The top prize is only $5000 (but its a game show on a Canadian cable channel), and its airing as a daily show with a 60 episode order (they\'ve paired it up on the schedule with reruns of Inside the Box, which incidentally aired on Canwest\'s OTA incarnation of E!; the current incarnation is a rebranding of the cable channel formally known as \"Star!\", now owned by CTV). The set is very bright, with white, red and black everywhere, along with the signature spinning camera in the centre.
Content-wise, by the name and channel alone, it can be easily inferred that all the questions are entertainment/celebrity related (and in fact, they are). Judging by Wikipedia\'s description of the format as a comparison, they do the first elimination round and the definitions round like the original (get as many from the stack as you can in 30 seconds, they all start with x). The final round with the last two contestants is a best of three minigames; in the episode I saw, the first was the auction round from the original (re-named \"Place Your Bets\"), the second was a trivia battle (which does not seem to occur in the original).
I\'m not sure how Cercle\'s bonus round was, but Pop Quiz\'s is downsized from La Cible\'s, and is known as the \"Winner\'s Circle\" (no relation to the Pyramid one, but given that the set is circular, and ironically, if you look at it in a certain way, is almost like a pyramid); there\'s three questions, one with three answers, one with two, and one with one, all done on a 15 second shot clock, which is, however, only running when the host (in this case Devon Soltendieck, a former MuchMusic personality who recently joined eTalk, who actually doesn\'t do a bad job. He\'s also fitting for the Quebecois origins of this show in Canada since he\'s from Dorval) is not reading the question. You only win the $5,000 if you get all the answers correct, but there seemed to be cheap sponsored prizes for making it through certain rounds or getting perfect in the Definitions round though (so its not like they\'re walking away with absolutely nothing). Of course, the girl who made it to the final round here lost, because \"I Don\'t Know\" is not one of the three leads of \"The Hangover\". He had a sidekick on-stage too for recapping the rounds, but she sounded a little obnoxious (thankfully she didn\'t talk much, her only major contribution beyond results was reminding us that http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2317986/Keshas-bizarre-admission-composing-music-breasts.html\'>Ke$ha admitted she allegedly writes songs with her breasts).
It\'s not too bad (which by Canadian cable standards, is good), it\'s a rung below most GSN originals, quality-wise, and the format as a whole (but with a more general format like the original) does feel like it could be a good GSN original, oddly enough (just increase the prize to $10,000, or $25K and expand the bonus round to make it 4 or 5 tiers)
