OK so here’s fun, you might have seen the story recently that ITV were looking into a few shows that skew male (because traditionally we’re difficult to reach, and hence advertisers will pay a large premium if they know young men are watching). The terribly titled but might be OK upcoming Mission Survive with Bear Grylls has this in mind, and it looks like they’ve asked TwoFour (currently making waves with the ABC1s on The Jump) to do a version of Belgian format Eternal Glory, broadcast locally as Eeuwige Roem.
In it, sportspeople (both men and women) compete in tests to see who is the ultimate sportsperson across disciplines like perserverance, stress, team building, power, that sort of thing. There are three tests each week, and the people at the bottom of the weekly leaderboard have to do a difficult Night Test to stay in the game. So far so Celebrity Born to Win with Dermot O’ Leary.
However there are a couple of things that make it a little bit more interesting, namely it’s a format from The New Belgian Primitives who sound like a 90s indie act but in fact are the guys behind Bother’s Bar favourites The Mole and De Slimste Mens ter Wereld amongst other things.
And look! Happily here’s the very first episode from the very first series on Vimeo with English subtitles so you can have a look for yourselves:
The challenges are quite fun (albeit, and you’ll notice this, hugely cheap) but there would certainly need to be some presentational changes if it wants to work in the UK, fewer empty shots, more focus on the challenges which will likely need to feel a bit bigger in scale if not be a bit bigger in scale. We’d probably drop the panel of sportspeople talking about things bit. I like the idea of the elimination challenge not necessarily ending with an elimination (Although I gather that in later series this isn’t the case, it becomes a duel).
The show had three series in Belgium and one in the Netherlands and sounds like it’s gone down well in Scandinavia (where being hardy is the regional sport). Could it work over here? It’ll likely depend on the names being lined up for it I suspect, it’ll likely suffer from the modern Superstars problem that anyone currently relevant will probably stay away, which is a shame.
That episode is from 2008 so it will be interesting to see what can be done with seven year’s difference.
Reality Bites is….alright? It gets a point from me for putting Alex Sibley back on my TV.
The male team captain should tone it down a bit.
Would Eternal Glory use famous sportspeople? They tread a fine line between the completely unknown and the unattainable expensive.
This reminds me how astonished I was when The Games wasn’t brought back for 2012
Well that’s what the show is designed around, although I suppose there’s no reason you couldn’t use normal people. It will probably be ex-professionals in the Mike Tindall mould (who’s also in Mission Survive as well as The Jump, perhaps he’s doing a bet to appear on as much reality as possible this year).
That site also had a later episode:
This one features the duel elimination- the two people who are lowest on the scoreboard face off. They’re on opposite sides of a wall (looks about 8-9 ft high) so they can’t see each other. They throw a glass ball over the wall (probably breakaway glass for safety); the other person must catch it- part of the strategy seems to be to time when you’re going to throw it to catch the other person off-guard. If the thrower fails to clear the wall and breaks the ball or the ball lands and breaks out of bounds (about a 10 by 6 foot area), the thrower loses. If the catcher misses and the ball breaks in bounds, the catcher loses.
There was also a 2010 Dutch series, didn’t do extremely well, nor can anything remember about it, must say enough…