Local wins big on Netflix game show
Hartford trivia host’s made-up answers get $50K in ‘Bull——’
HARTFORD — If you’ve ever attended a local trivia contest in Hartford, you might have bumped into Brian Harris.
He’s one of Hartford’s most popular trivia hosts, hosting games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at Parkville Market, Marlboro Tavern and City Steam Brewery. He’s been hosting trivia for about five years and devises original questions and themes to be featured in his games. Now local trivia fanatics can watch Harris perform on the big screen TV in a new Netflix trivia game show dubbed “Bull——.”
The show is hosted by comedian and actor Howie Mandel, the former host of “Deal or No Deal” who also voiced Gizmo in “Gremlins” and more. In the new game, one player takes the stage and is asked a trivia question. The player has the option to answer the question correctly or make an answer up. The other contestants stand by and must decide if the players answers are true or not (hence the name of the show.)
If all contestants choose bull——, then the player is eliminated. If the player can keep convincing the other contestants that they are telling the truth, then they move to the next round where they can win more money.
“Contestants strive to correctly answer difficult trivia questions. And when they can’t, they simply move on to plan B: lying through their teeth,” the Netflix site for the
show explains.
“Honesty may be a virtue, but on this game show hosted by Emmy nominee Howie Mandel, it’s never the best policy,” it says.
In his first four rounds, Harris didn’t answer a single question correctly but managed to convince the other players that
he was telling the truth.
He had won $50,000 and was given the option to play another round with the possibility of winning $75,000 or losing his initial $50,000. He chose to quit while he was ahead.
“I’ve completely lost the trust of every player up here,” Harris said on the show. Mandel responded, “I know. The fact that you got $50K for not knowing anything, that’s what I love about this game!”
Harris’s final trivia question asked about the origins of famed astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s nickname “Buzz.” Harris concocted a fake story about how Buzz Aldrin was raised on a bumble bee farm.
“I went to school in Columbus, Ohio, and Buzz Aldrin is from a Youngstown, Ohio, farm and he was raised on a honeybee farm in Ohio. You always see signs about the Aldrin bee farm,” Harris told a panel of skeptical contestants. Only one of them didn’t buy it.
“Were you finally telling the truth this time?” Mandel asked.
“Nah, that was BS,” said Harris. The real answer was that Aldrin’s sister used to call him “Buzzer.”
“The Buzz Aldrin answer was so farfetched I thought no one was going to believe me,” Harris said in an interview. “I was really nervous, so I came up with that thing about the bee farm. I lived in Ohio so just kind of floated the story about that, “Aldrin’s bee farm, you see it always when you come into Ohio.”
Harris said he planned to spend his winnings to fix his flooded basement, build a studio and maybe buy his 16-year-old son his first car. “This is going to help me live easier,” said Harris. “My basement is going to be changed around. I got into doing voice work and advertisements when COVID hit, so I may make a little studio so I can keep doing that.”