The show featured a host asking questions of a man, then his wife and secretary, to determine which of the latter two knew him better.
Hosted by Jim Peck, with Johnny Jacobs as announcer, it bore many similarities to Barris' The Newlywed Game.
The game started with the men answering three pointed questions, usually referencing their wives and secretaries in ways that would lead to potential marital discord.
According to Barris in his first autobiography, The Game Show King, the protests against the show—as well as the sometimes-evident lack of fun the contestants seemed to be having on it—prompted him to retreat from television production entirely.
Barris wrote that "The public backlash from Three's a Crowd not only caused the program to be canceled, but it took three other TV shows of mine with it.
Indeed, it was largely due to the backlash from Three's a Crowd that ratings for all of his other shows—including the still-popular The Gong Show—declined and were removed from the air by the start of the next television season.
[2] The series was replaced on February 4, 1980, by a revival of the 1960s game show Camouflage, also produced by Barris.
: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, David Hofstede ranks the show at number 94.
He wrote that it "offered the chance to watch a marriage dissolve on camera years before Jerry Springer", and noted that it received backlash from the United Auto Workers (UAW) and National Organization for Women (NOW).