So. One thing that came up in yesterday’s exciting “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” experiment was a show currently airing in the US called Escape Routes. It’s a reality show currently being shown on NBC on Saturday nights and not many people are watching it.
Well I watched episode one last night (I think it might have just finished, it’s a six week “thing” and episode six was last Saturday) and actually it’s alright. Six pairs travel to six different cities and do tasks set by Rossi Morreale and “social media sensation” (it says here) iJustine. One of which is an urban challenge, one is an interactive challenge, one is an escape challenge (Which doesn’t mean escaping from anything, it basically means ‘not in the city’). Points are awarded from 0-100 in 20 point increments depending on where the teams place in each challenge. Highest score at the end of the series wins $100,000 and a Ford Escape (do you see what they’ve done here?).
It’s basically an excuse for lots of product placement in the guise of a reality gameshow, but whilst this could be awful the challenges in episode one are quite good fun – the first one was a real life version of Zynga’s Hanging With Friends (it’s hangman for iPhone) with losers being ziplined 100ft down a building. The escape challenge involved real life dogfighting in actual real planes, albeit with lasers rather than missiles.
The interactive challenge forms a central focus of the show and well, it’s a bit gimmicky. That week there was a streamed talent show and viewers who had watched it online could vote for their favourite. But the contestants are encouraged to use social media to get as many people on their “team” as possible during the week, so it’s not a talent contest as much as a popularity contest. I get the feeling this might be a recurring idea, and as you can win a Ford Escape by backing the winning team I get the feeling there’s going to be a bit of a spiral element here. It is a pity that one of the central tenets seems the least interesting bit.
The show is mainly about the challenges although they added a little bit of interpersonal drama towards the end, although it felt very edited and manufactured to make it look like more of a sleight than I suspect it was. Overall it’s not a bad show, but there’s little here that makes it must see and no killer hook the whole thing is based around.
Here’s the site, all the episodes so far are up but you’ll probably need some sort of proxy or VPN to watch them if you’re outside the US.
People who live in Glass Houses shouldn’t have hosts…
http://www.tvguide.com/News/ABC-Orders-Glass-House-1046682.aspx
Interesting thanks David. I’m not entirely convinced a show centering around social media is likely to be all that great, I think you have to buy into completely as a viewer or it’s not going to do much for you at all and that sets rather a high barrier to entry.
Every episode will consist of people checking Facebook for an hour. Although I suppose Jailbreak had a similar sort of idea 15 years ago, where you could e-mail clues to the inmates.
Just having another read of that, it’s Public Property for the 2010s!
Gosh, it’s like no-one remembers ever happened.
For those of you who are not TV’s Fanmous Rav Wilding, went out in early 2002, as Channel 4’s immediate replacement for . It featured a dozen or so young people being cast away on an island in the south Pacific, and being given silly things to do by the viewing public.
The publicity said that the viewers would be in control, and could send messages to the Eden crew via the internet chatroom, because what we really wanted to see at 6pm was folks sitting in skimpy shorts tapping at computers. This was never going to make engaging television, and quickly turned into questions like “do we feed them fish or chocolate?” It was replaced by an additional episode of , which just about counted as an improvement.
Returning to the present day, this doesn’t feel like a Channel 4 show. C4 says in both its Entertainment and its Factual Entertainment commissioning FAQs that it’s not interested in derivative shows, though it is interested in cutting-edge programmes. My thought on the sounds coming out of Charlotte Street is that the management is working to reposition the channel away from the lingering, malevolent phantasm of B** B*****r.
My gut feeling for : doubt there will be a UK series, if there is it’ll be a one-shot wonder.
Oh, please not iJustine. Her reward for putting us all through Let’s Play Portal 2 Really Badly is getting actual presenting work? On an actual TV show? Really?