Mistaken 'Identity'

Jillette looks largely baffled as the host, perhaps because he usually works with a partner who is not only quiet, as opposed to the contestant, but silent -- the mute Teller, a kind of cross between Harry Langdon and Harpo Marx. Will Teller make a guest appearance on a future edition of "Identity"? Not if he sees the premiere and has any sense or self-esteem.

There's no moment-of-truth catchphrase on "Identity" to equal Mandel's hokey but suspenseful "Deal? Or no deal?" Instead, after the contestant makes her latest guess, Jillette will say to the stranger in question "Is that your identity?" or "What is your identity?" That just falls flat.

It's too early in the show's history to know what happens if a contestant gets the first guess wrong and scuttles the ship right out of dry dock; do the producers have to bring in 12 new strangers as well as a new contestant?

And if so, is there a kind of creepy purgatory backstage, a human zoo of would-be strangers waiting to be dragged out onto the soundstage and under the blinding lights? What a creepy place that must be -- a cross between Guantanamo and "The Twilight Zone." Or maybe Devil's Island and Howdy Doody's old Peanut Gallery.

The game and the show have one more gimmick: a panel of three "experts" on whom the contestant can call if stumped about the identity of one particular person. On the premiere, the experts include a bored-looking psychologist and a bored-looking FBI man. Jillette, whatever his attempts to seem otherwise, is bored-looking, too, come to think of it, but in this aspect of the competition, nobody is likely to look more bored than whatever unfortunate viewers give the show a sampling.

Those who do tune in will feel like lonely tourists who've lost their maps -- and whose SUV's navigational device has broken down -- and thus have wandered into the first inhabited spot they could find, little dreaming they're about to enter the standing reality game show equivalent of the proverbial Living Hell.

Identity (one hour) debuts tonight at 9 on Channel 4, then airs tomorrow through Friday at 8 p.m.