Wie is De Mol?, the Netherlands’ long running domestic version of De Mol is hugely successful, running almost annually since 1999 and regularly achieving figures over 3m even now (to put that into context, scaled up for population, that makes it a hit equivalent to a good year of I’m a Celeb over here) but like many 25-year-old shows there’s an element of feeling a bit long-in-the-tooth, a bit resting-on-their-laurels, a bit running-out-of-ideas. We’ve joked for a number of years that it feels like the starter for the Flemish main course, which somehow never disappoints, in the Spring.
So we’re surprised and slightly thrilled that the current special series with a civilian cast for streaming service NPO Start feels like someone’s given it a bit of a kick up the arse, we understand this is the first series for a new showrunner so perhaps not surprising. Sexy new titles! Really neatly remixed mission elements! Car chat! Hila Noorzai! Oman! The show retains its reputation for a really good location shot. We’ve often joked that an average WIDM challenge is “Chinese Whispers going up a hill”, whilst they don’t yet have the Flemish comedy special sauce, they feel more involved and interesting (theme park logistic memory laser tag avoidance! Fun boat race with puzzles! Trying to identify things whilst being driven up and down sand dunes at speed!). Having the contestants drive themselves opens up one of the best things about Flemish Mole, funny and offhand conversational clips between challenges. And Hila’s great! An ex-contestant (as most WIDM hosts are), she’s much more present in the challenges and has a no-nonsense attitude throughout.
And they’re managing this putting out two episodes a week on Fridays, but relatively short eps at 40-45 minutes so a pair of them isn’t much longer than a normal broadcast episode. If you want to watch it you can, NPO isn’t geoblocked (in the UK at least). You can turn on the Dutch subs using the cog icon, and if your browser can autotranslate it will translate them on the fly. Four episodes have gone out at time of writing, four remain, two every Friday. We’re currently discussing it in the Discord.
I’ve had someone ask about autotranslating – I’m using Edge, I presumed it’d be the same on Chrome but it sounds like others are having problems. Make sure your browser is translating before you press play on the video, is my advice.