1. SUMMERTIME FOR AMAZON’S PRIME
Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service has announced the premieres of 3 new series this summer (2 datings + 1 docu).
The first dating is The One That Got Away (available via Prime Video on June 24th). In this series, six participants looking for a soulmate are given the chance to explore a lifetime of missed connections: people from their past enter through “The Portal” to surprise them. Will they fall in love? The title (apart from a Katy Perry song) is recycled from a scripted series aired on the same Prime Video in 2018 (pic below).
In the second one, Cosmic Love, 4 singletons attempt to find their perfect mate via astrological matchmaking. Their romantic adventures will take place at a retreat run by a mystical guide, the Astro Chamber, where they’ll socialize, match, date, eliminate, and potentially marry their match based solely on signs from the stars. Despite the fact that in the official presentation it is described as “unique”, actually the concept is the same as Discovery+’s Zodiac Island (see Friday’s Espresso 11th Feb and 6th May). Astrology is definitely a popular trend in this period!
Finally, Forever Summer: Hamptons is a classical docusoap. A group of college coming-of-age kids from various backgrounds is followed as they work at a seaside restaurant in the Hamptons by day and live the town by night, testing friendships and exploring love.
2. NICE GUYS vs FBOYS
Another dating show for another streaming platform (the OTT’s are pushing very much on unscripted).
Fboy Island premiered last summer on HBO Max U.S., with such success that the series was renewed for a second season just a month later. Now the platform has set local versions in 4 countries: Denmark, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands.
The format centers on three female contestants and twenty-four male counterparts. Of the men, twelve are self-professed “nice guys” and are looking for real love, while the other half identify as “Fboys”, who are womanizers and participate in the show only to win the cash prize of $100,000.
The “3S dating formula” (sun, seduction & sensuality) continues to work well.
3. A SHOW IS NOT (NECESSARILY) A FORMAT
André Renaud -BBC Studio’s senior vice-president of global format sales, international production and formats- has joined the Advisory Board of FRAPA, the international industry association dedicated to the recognition and protection of entertainment formats.
In his first statement, he says that he applies the following 5 filters when he’s assessing the format potential of a new concept: 1) is it unique? 2) is it adaptable? 3) can it be scaled up or down, from primetime to daily stripped episodes? 4) is it returnable? 5) does it provide the feel-good entertainment or bold, original storytelling that audiences are looking for?
Apart the unicity, something that everyone is looking for in theory, but in practice there are lots of formats looking all the same (see also in this issue), the points 2, 3 and 4 are relevant, being exactly the watershed between a “real” format and a “generic” show. Indeed, only a format can be scaled up and down, last for lots of series, and, most of all, localized in all countries (with a few adaptations).
Formats are first of all programs that can travel and that have economic value also outside their own nation and this is exactly the reason why “format” and “program” (or “show”) are not synonyms.
“It may be true that you have a brilliant show” ends Renaud, “but the question is: is it a brilliant format?”