Friday's Espresso - 18th NOV

Week from 11th to 18th November

1. SINGING IN JAPAN

Nippon Tv has alway stood for the originality of their formats: maybe not all of them are so effective, but often remarkable. For example, one of their classics, Old Enough, a little gem, has recently been revived by Netflix, becoming a success.

Also their last brand-new talent show, Vocals Like Locals, has a distinctive twist. Amateur singers from around the world sing a local hit from their favorite foreign country, trying to sound like a native, while not necessarily even speaking the local language.

For example, an Indian woman who doesn’t speak Korean sings a k-pop hit, a French man who loves Japanese food sings a Japanese song, a Peruvian high-school group sings a piece from Singapore and so on.

Renowned celebrities will judge and choose the winner. The winners of the first round will advance to the finals to compete for the championship. One of them will be crowned the champion and get the chance to meet the hit song’s original singer.

The variety of costumes, styles, countries, moods etc. makes this show fun and enjoyable.

2. THE DISCREET CHARM OF COOKING SHOWS

Cooking shows are only rarely newsworthy, but they continue to be launched in televisions all around the world, often with very good results. It’s a kind of evergreen genre, always effective and beyond fashion and trends. Tv chefs have become great stars in every country, as shown by the example of Gordon Ramsey, who recently opened his own prodco: Studio Ramsey Global.

To talk only about the news of the last days, Roku Original, part of The Roku Channel streamer platform, greenlights Morimoto’s Sushi Master, a cooking competition series focused on the art of sushi-making. Furthermore, Friday 25th November will premiere ¡Que Delicioso! (How delicious!), Roku’s inaugural Spanish language original series, with renowned chefs Marcela Valladolid and Chris Valdes who host and judge the seven-episode competition celebrating Latin cuisine. 

In the meantime, Chefclub, a leading food-themed content studio, has entered a programming partnership with ViX, the largest Spanish-language free streaming service, in order to launch food programs to viewers in the US, UK, Spain and Latin America, including Chefclub Channel on Samsung Plus TV in France and Switzerland.

Chefclub is also very active in the kids arena with a successful publishing and consumer products range and an animated children’s series starring the Chefclub Kids mascots launching at the last Mipcom this year.

Finally, Endemol Shine Brasil is set to launch MasterChef+, yet another spin-off of the global franchise, which marks the local version of the series to feature 20 contestants aged 60-plus. It will be on air on the Brazilian channel Band and Discovery Home & Health.

Certainly not original shows, but with the huge quality of being highly reliable.

3. VIRTUAL MAPI

Mapi is a Spanish family game show, based on the Japanese format Chiko's Challenge and produced by Mediacrest for the Spanish public broadcaster RTVE. It premiered in August on TVE1 channel and moved last week on Clan, more suitable for its target.

The show takes its name from Mapi, an Augmented Reality 3D character. Using Multi-Camera Virtual Production technology, Mapi can perform the same as an actor of flesh and blood: a hybrid half-human and half-3D-character who interacts with other actors, contestants and real-life objects.

In recent past other game shows used this kind of technology, but for now only on the scenographic level (for example Family Piggy Bank - see Friday’s Espresso of 21the Jan and The Connection - see FE of 10th June). In Mapi, Augmented Reality allows to get the best performance from an actor (in this case Carla Pulpón) and translate it into a 3D-character in real time. A remarkable step forward.