FRIDAY'S ESPRESSO - 12th January 2024
The most followed newsletter about unscripted in the world
1. MUSICALS FOR CELEBS
Stars on Stage premiered January 5th on RTL4 in The Netherlands. The format is a big shiny floor show, produced by MediaLane (founded by Iris van den Ende, daughter of Joop Van den Ende, cofounder of Endemol and founder of Stage Entertainment, Europe's largest live entertainment company) and distributed by All Right Media.
The format follows 8 celebrities - who all have a different professional occupation and are all performing outside their comfort zone - competing to become a real musical theatre star and perform the most famous musical hit songs of Broadway and West End, live on stage.
2 famous hosts will guide celebrities throughout the entire show, and each performance is judged by a panel of 4 expert critics. Each week one of the celebrities will be eliminated, until the best 3 remain for the ultimate final.
The concept is very simple, but the strength of the performances and the magic of musical - that joins famous songs, impactful choreographies and beautiful costumes - make it a perfect family entertainment.
2. “GOLDEN DAYS FORMATS”
Monday 8th January, La Mejor Generación premiered on Telecinco, the Spanish free-to-air channel operated by Mediaset España.
The format, produced by Gestmusic and hosted by Lara Álvarez (Supervivientes, Gran Hermano, Gran Hermano Vip, Secret Story: La Casa de los Secretos….), is a classic intergenerational music/competition show. A number of celebs sings hits from the last seven decades, divided into 3 groups: “los Vinilos” (the vinyls), “los Casetes” (the tapes) and “los Streamers”.
In each episode there are three rounds of performances in which an artist of each team sings a hit from a different decade and is voted by the public in the studio and the captains of the other 2 teams. At the end of the program, the singer with the most points will gain the “Disco de Oro” (Golden Disc) and a cash prize for an ONG; her/his team is named “the best generation” of the night.
An extra-easy and straight concept for a format of one the trends destined to become more and more popular in 2024 (especially in the “traditional” channels, but not only): “Golden Days Formats”, i.e. formats that celebrate the culture/music/lifestyle of the past, to find relief from the complex and “anxiety provoking” of our time.
3. A GERMAN SHOW FROM AN AMERICAN SEGMENT
Sometimes – albeit rarely - not a whole format is localized, but only part of it. This is the case of German broadcaster ProSieben, that in 2024 is going to adapt the popular Line Up segment from The Late Late Show with James Corden (on air on the American broadcast CBS from 2015 to 2023) into a German version titled Wer Isses? (colloquial for “Wer Ist Es?”: Who Is It?), produced by Tresor TV and hosted by Steven Gätjen.
This has been possible because the Line Up segment has gained a big popularity on the US show. The concept is easy: 2 teams of contestants observe line-ups of everyday people known as “suspects”. The goal of the contestants is to guess details about these suspects’ lives, such as professions and hobbies, based solely on their first impressions. A simple but quite effective mechanism.
The segment as format itself has already been adapted in France as Visual Suspect, for the French commercial television network TF1 in summer 2022, without great results, to tell the truth (maybe “expanding” a segment in a whole, long format was a bit too much). Let’s see if the German version will have better luck.
