Take a Good Look (TV series)

Take a Good Look
Kovacs and wife Edie Adams in a promotional photo for the show, 1960
Created by	Ernie Kovacs
Directed by	Barry Shear Joey Behar
Presented by	Ernie Kovacs
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	53
Production
Producer(s)	Maury Cohen Milt Hoffman Peter Arnell
Running time	25 minutes
Release
Original network	ABC
Original release	October 22, 1959 – February 9, 1961

Take a Good Look is an American television game show created by and starring Ernie Kovacs, which aired from 1959 to 1961 on ABC's Thursday-night block at 10:30 PM Eastern Time.

Season 1 consisted of 39 episodes, from October 22, 1959 to July 21, 1960. Season 2 was far shorter, airing just 14 episodes between October 27, 1960 and February 9, 1961. 20 episodes were repackaged for syndication in September 1978.

First appearing on television in 1951, Kovacs was an extremely prolific producer of television comedy throughout the 1950s. As a result of the critical success of his 1957 NBC special Silent Show, Ernie came to Hollywood in 1958, where he had a film contract with Columbia Pictures to write and consult on screenplays – but no television series of his own. At that time, sponsors did not buy commercial time on a television shows as a commodity; rather, a sponsor would produce a television program in its entirety and present it to a network for broadcast. While visiting a Hollywood movie set, Kovacs happened to meet a cigar company executive who was impressed that Kovacs continually smoked a cigar. Ernie was impressed that this corporate executive was carrying a book on Bertold Brecht.

As a result of this chance meeting, a business deal ensued in which Consolidated Cigar/Dutch Masters became the sole sponsor of Ernie's newest idea for a television series. In the show itself, Ernie performed in many Dutch Masters commercials, usually presented as yet another type of "blackout gag" shown during the show and themselves unique due to being done completely in pantomime and directed by Kovacs himself. The Congress of TV Editorial Writers was impressed enough with the silent commercials to award Kovacs with their Madison Avenue Award in 1960.

Kovacs likely took inspiration from his ten appearances as guest panelist on What's My Line? (July–November 1957) and two appearances as a Mystery Guest (September 6, 1956 and September 7, 1957).

Take A Good Look was a parody of the Goodson-Todman panel games of the era: To Tell the Truth, I've Got a Secret, and What's My Line. Kovacs produced and hosted a format similar to those shows, in which a panel of celebrities attempted to guess a secret about a seemingly-ordinary person brought onstage.