• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, March 11, 2015

You should expect to have fun when attending an upfront presentation put on by a network known for games, and the upfront event put on by the Game Show Network in Manhattan yesterday (March 10) met all expectations.

At a pre-presentation breakfast, guests mingled with GSN stars ranging from Jerry Springer (host of GSN’s “Baggage”) to Rebecca Romijn (“Skin Wars”) while a young woman stood in a corner having her body painted head to toe with tiger stripes.

This was an attention-getting promotion for the Romijn-hosted “skill-based competition show” in which body-painting artists compete for a $100,000 grand prize. Romijn was cast because of her own body-painting bona-fides.

Uninformed journalist as I am (on some subjects anyway), I was schooled by Romijn on her body-painting history -- from her days as a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model to her role as the body-painted character known as Mystique in three “X-Men” movies. My bad for not knowing these things, Rebecca.

“Skin Wars” is in its second season, and it was one of the shows highlighted during GSN’s upfront as an example of the network’s push into original programming.

“Last year, we talked about how this team, our owners, were behind the significant expansion of original programming at GSN,” said GSN President and CEO David Goldhill during the presentation. “A year into that, I think we can safely say that it has really driven the network to new heights. We have five returning series in 2015, and to give you some perspective on that, there have been very few years in which GSN previously had done five series at all.”

Among the other originals GSN highlighted were returning series such as “Idiotest,” hosted by comedian Ben Gleib, who emceed the event with a stand-up performance that scored with the audience in the only form of measurement that mattered here: laughter.

GSN’s production of originals continues in 2015. Yesterday, the network announced it has given the OK to two new series: “Steam Punk’d,” a design-competition show rooted in the “steam punk” movement in which aficionados fascinated with 19th-century and early 20th-century technology adapt the era’s gadgetry to design modern-day furnishings; and “Lie Detector,” hosted by Australian comedian Rove McManus. The show has comedians telling stories to a studio audience, who are then challenged to determine whether or not the comedians are lying.

Also announced: The production of a pilot from Jason Blum, producer of scary movies such as the “Paranormal Activities” series. His proposed new show for GSN is called “Hellevator” and it will have contestants being delivered in a mysterious elevator to the various floors of a building where they will try to survive a series of frightening scenarios.

The one show that seemed to draw the most noticeable positive reaction was not really a “show” but a series of interstitial features called “Man vs. Fly,” in which a single contestant in a small enclosed room faces off against a single housefly. The challenge is for the contestant to kill the fly in as short a time as possible, while a pair of sportscasters describe the entire event as if it’s a mixed martial-arts death match.

It was unclear whether or not animal-rights activists will have something to say about the “harm” being afflicted on flies in the course of producing these interstitials. Does PETA concern itself with flies? When the GSN upfront was over, I came away thinking: What a fun place GSN is -- unless you’re a fly, of course.