The premise of the show is one of those murder mystery parties/dinner theaters with a reality competition laid on top of it. Each episode, there is a murder. The contestants must try to piece together the murder. Each one can choose to investigate the crime scene, the morgue, or the last known location the person was before the murder. Since no contestant can be in all three places, some information must be shared, but the murderer is among them, so it's hard to tell who to trust. Not to mention that they are all competing to be the final contestant "left alive". After the investigation, everyone is given a riddle (a la Treasure Hunters), whose solution will lead to one more clue to how the murder occurred. Then in a confessional, the contestants lay out their theory of how the crime took place and who the murderer is. The two contestants whose theories were furthest from what happened become marked, with one of them becoming the murder victim for the next episode.
It's a really interesting premise for a show, but it definitely is pretty darn awkward. The deaths are so blatantly fake that the contestants even remotely acting like any of it is real is really just insulting to their (and our) intelligence. One contestant convulses on some wet ground as a cut, sparking wire lays on the ground kind of near her, but clearly not touching the water; one contestant on fire runs outside and jumps in a pool and somehow instantly drowns?; one contestant "conveniently" needs to go to the kitchen because their meal wasn't cooked like everyone else's and gets "attacked" by a mountain lion? I'm pretty sure everyone knows how murder mysteries are supposed to be, so acting like it's real when there's no real effort made to make it appear real is just strange. The confessionals where the contestants lay out their theory about the murder are just terribly acted (I'm sure the people had fun doing them, but over the top doesn't begin to describe it).
The other annoying part is that it's a lot like the Sherlock Holmes books, in that, as the viewer, there is no way for us to really play along or figure out anything ahead of time. The riddles are more like scavenger hunts and all the contestants seem pretty stupid, so it honestly could be any of them, but despite that, there is some part of me that wants to keep watching. Maybe part of me is hoping it'll turn out like the murder mystery episode of Saved by the Bell where there will be a twist of epic proportions part way through, but most likely this will just be a show that was much better in concept than in production. Really, it's just making me more upset that Treasure Hunters never got another season...
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