There’s something intoxicating about a well-executed game show – and I’m not just saying that to justify the hours I spent watching “The $25,000 Pyramid,” “The Match Game,” and “Password” as a child. As a deeply cynical adult, I still find myself almost unnaturally engaged and entertained by the sight of people losing money on television. On the best game shows it’s easy to lose; that’s the producers’ plan to begin with, and the path to “big money” (as contestants on “Wheel of Fortune” so quaintly call it) is highly treacherous. It’s no coincidence that “Candyland” hasn’t been turned into a game show; no one wants an outcome that depends only on a simple spin. We like to see our contestants working their brains a little.

That’s what makes NBC’s new game show, “Deal or No Deal,” so much fun. It’s not hard to play, but it demands that contestants make constant calculations of their chances – and, in some ways, of their own self-concept. “Deal or No Deal” cleverly asks the player to revisit his motives, question his thinking, and even doubt the wisdom of his loved ones. I say “his,”but I mean “her. “In the thrilling first episode, a woman in her 40s fought the odds, tempted fate, and – in a 45-minute turn – experienced mood swings that would send a lesser mortal into therapy for life.

The rules of “Deal or No Deal” (already a hit game show in 35 countries) couldn’t be simpler; 8-year-olds can follow along, and probably will. The show debuts at 8 p.m. next Monday, the first weeknight of Christmas break (and liberation from homework) for millions of schoolchildren. NBC cleverly has come up with something new for them to watch. The show will only air for five consecutive nights, a move that sounds riskier than it is; in fact it’s kind of brilliant, because there’s just enough about “Deal or No Deal” to engage you for a week, not a season. No one in Hollywood has yet forgotten the “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?” debacle, in which ABC saturated its 2000-01 schedule with the hot new game show, only hopelessly to bore its fickle audience. “Deal or No Deal” has been designed to avert that fate.

Host Howie Mandel (an odd but strangely perfect choice) introduces the rules with only a hint of his usual irony. A contestant has the choice of 26 swanky suitcases, each in the possession of a beautiful woman dressed in the standard ball-gown getup of the Game Show Bimbo. Each case contains a different monetary amount, from one penny to $1 million. Once an amount has been chosen, it gets eliminated from the list of possible winnings; the object of the game is to keep picking cases with low dollar amounts. The wrinkle is a man in a glass booth overlooking the proceedings – “The Bank” – who every so often phones in with an offer to get the contestant to stop playing the game. That amount of money varies according to the contestant’s odds of winning. If the player wants to accept the offer, he says, “Deal.”

But what makes the game exciting, of course, is when the player declares, “No deal” – a grand gesture that involves a horizontal crossing of hands. It appears to be a crucial part of the answer, and integral to its prospects as a national catchphrase. (That has become a time-honored game show tradition, as in, “Is that your final answer?”) In the first episode, the contestant – Karen Van, a middle-aged black woman accompanied on stage by her excitable husband and adult daughter – frequently opted for the “No deal” option. It raised the game’s emotional stakes immeasurably; by the end of her ordeal, I had become completely caught up in what appeared to be a cockeyed decision-making process. By the bitter end, I better understood the dynamic of her marriage than I did dozens of couples I’d watched on reality shows. But that’s because game shows create an environment for contestants to face their deepest demons; they’re less a test of intellect than of emotional fortitude. It’s the classic human dilemma: How much am I willing in life to risk to gain a bigger reward? I’ve been asking myself that question ever since I started watching this show’s inspiration, “Let’s Make a Deal,” on NBC at age 9, and haven’t stopped yet.

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When will television programmers rise up as one and demand that Alec Baldwin save the American sitcom? Every time I watch Mr. Baldwin host “Saturday Night Live” (he did it for the 12th time this past week) I’m reminded how amazingly funny he is. The producers of “Will & Grace” have wasted his prodigious talents on a supporting role this past season, when it’s clear he could effortlessly carry his own network series. My personal choice would be a weekly show based on his most brilliant SNL character – the classic 1998 “Pete Schwetty” sketch, in which Mr. Baldwin appeared as a guest on the TV show “Delicious Dish” to discuss his famous “Schwetty Balls.” I doubt I’m alone in believing that Pete Schwetty deserves a television series of his own.