FRIDAY'S ESPRESSO - 17th November
The most followed newsletter about unscripted in the world
1. CHINESE CRUSH
It’s not so easy to know exactly what’s going on in the Chinese format landscape. Even though MipCom has named China the 2023 country of honor, most of their shows still continue to remain a bit mysterious to us. So let’s see one of them, recently launched.
Crush Over 2023 premiered on Oct 21st on the Tencent Video platform WeTV and is also available on YouTube. The format, hosted by actor and martial artist Donnie Yen, (pic below) is defined a “survival reality” and openly inspired by the Korean Netflix's Physical: 100 (see FE 20th Jan).
47 “strong” contestants - athletes, retired military personnel, rock climbers and fitness enthusiasts - challenge each other in a series of “extreme” trials that puts their endurance to the test, during 21 harsh days, inside a big studio.
The opening ranking system of the first episode was quite interesting. Each contestant was asked to choose a number from one to 47, based on their self-assessed abilities, with one being the strongest. This number determined the weight of the vest (from 1kg to 8kg) they had to wear.
After every challenge, that are physical and mental at the same time (for example, playing a kind of huge chess game with giant pieces), the captains of the loser teams must enter the “decompression chamber” to vote the contestant who has to leave the game forever.
Not particularly original or remarkable as a whole, but with but with a few interesting insights.
2. BRITISH CELEBS GO TO THE COUNTRY
In this period of reboots and spin offs, another title is going to be added to this trend: Celebrity Escape to the Country (produced by Fremantle label Naked West) will be on air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in December.
The format is of course the spin-off of the original format Escape to the Country, that has been on the air since 2002 on BBC One and BBC Two, for 24 series, always with good results.
As the original series, the host helps house buyers who want to swap city living for a home in the country. In this case the people hoping to make a countryside relocation are well-known faces, like popstars Cheryl Baker, TV health professional, Doctor Ranj Singh, Strictly Come Dancing’s Janette Manrara and Aljaž Škorjanec, and Jenny Ryan AKA ‘The Vixen’ from The Chase.
A normal and understandable revamp operation of a backbone of the BBC’s daytime, that has also (detail of no less importance) a significant global social media presence.
3. … AND DUTCH FAMILIES GO CAMPING
The first format created by the new reality division of Talpa Studios will premiere on 1st of January 2024, on SBS6 in the Netherlands, and will be also available on Prime Video.
The title of this brand-new adventure reality show is Camping The Wilderness and it is a kind of variation of the very popular, long-term trend that we can define “extreme experience”.
Four Dutch “ normal” families who have never traveled beyond the Netherlands will be staying in a familiar typical Dutch-style campsite for two weeks. The twist is that it is in the heart of the Botswana wilderness, surrounded by breathtaking landscapes and wild animals.
From here, the campers must embark on various and adventurous excursions, from night-time safaris to sleeping under the stars in the wild. Meanwhile, they are challenged to photograph as many animals as possible. Each photograph is worth a certain amount of money, the rarer the animal, the higher the amount.
