Deal or No Deal

Deal or No Deal premiered on NBC on December 19, 2005, with Howie Mandel hosting an American version of Miljoenenjacht, the Dutch hit from format factory Endemol. The game needed no rulebook: a contestant claims one of 26 sealed briefcases holding amounts from a penny to $1,000,000, then opens the others one by one while the unseen Banker phones down offers to buy them out. Take the money — "deal" — or keep opening cases and pray.

It was an immediate sensation, typically averaging 10 to 16 million viewers an episode in its first season, with the June 2006 season finale drawing over 18 million. The wall of identically dressed briefcase models became a signature of its own — case number 24 was held for a stretch by a then-unknown Meghan Markle — and Mandel's signature fist bump crossed over into the culture at large.

For all the hysteria, the million stayed locked up for years: no one won the top prize until 2008, when Jessica Robinson turned down a $561,000 buyout, opened her case, and found the $1,000,000 inside. By then the format was everywhere — a daily syndicated half-hour version launched in September 2008 with a $500,000 top prize — and the primetime original wound down on May 18, 2009, with a brief CNBC-era revival following in 2018.

It remains the purest distillation of the 2000s game-show boom: a show about nothing but nerve, luck, and how much your family in the front row can scream.