Do you enjoy watching people squirm? Do you say you don't like reality TV but then, alone with your remote, no super-serious documentaries on PBS to watch, no literary criticism or foreign policy to write, do you step over to the unscripted side for a few jollies? Do you, or have you ever, or will you ever, or might you ever, have an interest in Fox's new lie-detector game show, "The Moment of Truth," which premiered Wednesday night after "American Idol"?
Are you unclear about the premise of the series, even though Fox has promoted it relentlessly, hoping to build a hit during prime time's fallow period due to the writers' strike? What if, the hourlong show proposes, you were to answer embarrassing personal questions backstage with a polygraph machine, then answer the same questions on camera, in front of an audience that includes your closest loved ones? Would you be honest and win up to $500,000, as the questions become increasingly invasive? Or would you lie and get busted by the show's host, Mark L. Walberg?
Are you prepared to let the truth come flying out of the closet as 21 racy questions come flying at you? "Do you lust for extramarital sex?" "Would you donate a kidney to save your father's life?" "Is there a part of your husband's body that repulses you?" Can you handle the personal stakes, which involve hurting and alienating your nearest and dearest and ruining your professional credibility, all because you want to make a few quick bucks?
Why did personal trainer and former pro football player Ty Keck, the show's first contestant, lie on question 13 and say he'd never touched a female client "more than was required"? Because he didn't want to offend his clients or his wife, who'd already heard him say he wasn't sure they'd stay married? Why did he bother to appear on "The Moment of Truth" if he was going to fib? Did he just need the world to admire his impossibly all-American face? Why didn't Walberg finish the segment by asking Ty a question about his motivation?
Should you watch "The Moment of Truth"? Are you a patient person, who doesn't mind a show that moves at a snail's pace as each question is . . . milked . . . for . . . tension? Do you enjoy the cold dramatics of today's challenge shows, whose steely graphics, white lighting, and heavy-handed music seem to shout "The Future Isn't Pretty"? Do you mind wondering if the contestants on "The Moment of Truth" are all just actors or if the polygraph results are accurate?
Are you interested in an hour of TV that's as repetitive and irritating as an entire TV review of questions?
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.
