I really like Reality Blurred, and in particular I love absolutely everything about Andy’s interview with Mark Burnett.
Iconic One Theme | Powered by Wordpress
I really like Reality Blurred, and in particular I love absolutely everything about Andy’s interview with Mark Burnett.
Mark must be pissed that Survivor was never a hit in his native UK. For some reason, other shows like Wipeout has translated much better to the UK.
Survivor had an extremely tortuous birth compared to most formats, so it’s not really a fair comparison. But the fact that our version of the US version of Survivor wasn’t terribly well produced didn’t help either.
I always thought it was quite funny that we were one of the last people to get a version of our own format.
I thought the UK version was well produced myself, my only real criticism (albeit quite a big one) was that the pacing was too slow initially. The actual show was very rewarding if you could get past that.
Getting the pacing wrong on a reality show is a bit like doing a sitcom without any jokes. Without content, the show is nothing.
Didn’t Vicar of Dibley once try that…?
There was plenty of content, though. But it was presented in a more low-key way than the US show.
I think a lot of the problem was that, by then, the UK audience were already used to reality shows and people being voted out (Big Brother) and had had tons of ‘surviving in the wilderness’ shows, so it didn’t really bring anything new to the table.
I still live in hope that we get a UK Survivor series 3, sadly with IAC its unlikely.
The UK version fell apart when ITV tried to schedule it like BB (initially it ran with regular episodes Mon/Thu and interview editions on Tue/Fri) – plus ITV couldn’t get their head around having a show with no public vote.
It’s a shame really it didn’t come along a few years later after The Apprentice as I think ITV would have been more willing to give it a chance then.
71 Degrees North though is set to be recommissioned – and that’s close enough for now.
I don’t think that’s quite true or fair – what other shows were having public votes at the time other than one series of Big Brother and the Stars In Their Eyes grand final?