BY MELISSA HECKSCHER >STAFF WRITER

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Collapsing into an overstuffed chair after 10 hours of shooting his latest show, "Trivial Pursuit: America Plays," Christopher Knight pulls out an elastic band and begins wrapping a black plastic box onto his left arm.

"It's my bone stimulator," Knight says nonchalantly, as the black box begins to softly beep. "For my broken arm. I broke it twice doing 'Celebrity Circus' (in July) . ... It's still broken."

Call it middle-child syndrome, but Knight - best-known for the role he took 40 years ago as Peter Brady in "The Brady Bunch" - can't get enough.

After letting TV viewers creep into his personal space on "Surreal Life," peer into his married life in "My Fair Brady" and observe his acrobatic prowess (and vulnerability) on "Celebrity Circus," the 50-year-old Hermosa Beach resident is trying his hand at game show hosting.

"When I said to my friends, 'Oh, I'm sort of testing for a game show,' they all said, 'Oh, you'd be great as a game show host," Knight said. "Then after rehearsing for a while, I thought, 'I'm not sure I will be,' because it's really easy to get lost. ... It's a challenge to get used to it when you've never done it before."

But Knight, who has mastered his game show host smile and zippy banter, is doing just fine.

"Trivial Pursuit: America Plays," which premiered Sept. 22, (airing twice daily, weekdays 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. on FOX) premiered Sept. 22 and is based on the popular Hasbro board game, except that instead of players battling each other to collect colored pie pieces, "America Plays" pits studio contestants against their at-home viewers.

Viewers submit their videotaped trivia questions - which can be anything from pop culture miscellany ("Who is the head Smurf?") to geographical know-how ("What's the capital of Minnesota") - through the show's Web site or by mail. If chosen, their questions are aired on the show.

"The questions have to be something that people could have heard or would know," said executive producer Burt Wheeler. "You can't have people asking questions like, 'What is my mother's middle name?'"

If an in-studio contestant gets a question wrong, the monetary value of that question goes to "America's Team," a team made up of the people whose questions appear on that episode. At the end of each show, if "America's Team" has earned more than the in-studio contestant, the money is divided among team members (usually 15-17 people).

About a million dollars will be given to viewers throughout the season, Wheeler said.

"Some of our toughest questions come from junior high school kids because they've just learned a fact in school that we've all forgotten," he said.

It's a new avenue for Knight, who has spent the past four years doing reality TV, including a season of VH1's "The Surreal Life," which led to his televised relationship and marriage to "America's Next Top Model" winner Adrianne Curry. They are still married and live in Hermosa Beach.

Initially, Knight had rejected the idea of doing reality TV after spending more than a decade forging a successful computer marketing career.

"I wasn't a fan of reality television - I had the opinion that it was at the expense of the people in it," Knight said. "I sort of had an attitude about it."

Suffice to say, his attitude changed and his foray into reality television lent new buzz to the Brady name.

But his stint in reality TV didn't sit well with some of his former 1970s co-stars.

"I had dinner last weekend with Eve Plumb (Jan Brady) who had sort of disowned me," Knight said. "It's not that she had written me off, she just sort of put me in the closet.

"In a way, (she thought) we were cashing in on Brady," he continued. "But for me, I was just letting Brady work for me. It was a quick way to re-adjust everyone to who I really was."

That said, being perennially identified as a 10-year-old Brady boy can be frustrating.

"It's odd to be pushing 50 and have people saying, 'Oh you're one of the kids from 'The Brady Bunch,'" he said. "People are like, 'Oh you look just the same,' and I'm like, 'Are you crazy?' I'm 40 years older."

melissa.heckscher@dailybreeze.com 

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"Trivial Pursuit: America Plays" airs 3 to 4 p.m. weekdays on FOX.
To submit a trivia question or for information on becoming a contestant, go to www.tpamericaplays.com.