A guest post by TV’s Dan Peake:
Hello Bothers Bar Community!
We put a lot of faith in the Dutch version of The Mole, and hold it in high regard. Earlier this year, the Belgians decided to have a crack at making a series and… and I’m going to whisper this… I think it’s actually better than the Dutch version.
In terms of style, it’s halfway between the UK and Dutch versions, the host mingles with the contestants often like in the UK show, and it retains the stunning cinematography of the latter (whilst sharing the clever games of both). The challenges tend to have a bigger ‘scale’ than that of the Dutch Mole, and I think it vastly improves the series. There are a couple of interesting twists on the gameplay that crop up during the series too, that I shan’t spoil.
The first series concluded back in March and is available to watch ungeoblocked if you have links to the shows. There aren’t subtitles, but you can pick up the vast majority of the games and how they work (although there are one or two you won’t, I’m still confused about couple).
The links to each individual episode are below. You can go to their website, but as the series is finished it is full of spoilers, so please don’t go there until you’ve watched it all.
The whole series has a wonderful cold open – you should watch the first 1 minute regardless – and there are some brilliant challenges mixed in. As I say, I think this is just as good, if not better, than the Dutch version. Belgium agreed, a second series is in production. Do let me know if you watch it, and let me know what you think. (No spoilers on the BB site, just in case). I had a ball watching this, I hope you do too.
It’s probably no surprise that the Belgians do it well seeing as it’s originally Belgian and they deliberately decided to end the original run it whilst it was very popular. Still, something I will be watching in the coming days and weeks, thanks Dan.
They speak Dutch(ish)!
There is something marvellous about when I recognise a word or phrase due to hearing it on the Dutch show.
Only 5 minutes in… but what a great opening.
Thanks Dan!
wish some kind person would do english sub titles for it as would love to watch it but just cant without eng sub titles
This is really bloody good actually, like a highly stylised retread of old-skool Mole from the turn of the millennium, rather than one that’s trying to stay fresh fifteen series on (I say that as a fan of the Dutch show, obviously).
Quite enjoyed how every other sentence is just someone shouting ‘fuck’.
It seems interesting I skimmed through the first two episodes,I will proly watch it in small chunks so I dont get too distracted by trying to figure out what is going on.
Heres hoping that some awsome fan can get us a translation some day 😀
Thats what im hoping some awesome fan can get us a translation some day as would love to watch it but just cant without knowing whats going on
doing abit of google there’s an english sub somewhere for the first episode but not the others & this was posted like a month ago so doubt other episodes will get done by this person
The host looks like Charlie Brooker.
This is the most beautiful non-fictional show I have seen in my life. I really wish I had more time right now to watch the series immediately. It’s really great! Thanks for the links Dan!
Episode 3 doesn’t seem to exist any more 🙁
My bad, just not on my iPad.
Anyway here’s fun! Here are the original seasons of De Mol which started the whole thing off. It’s still got the same theme!
https://m.youtube.com/user/PrejudgedMax24
I really hope the Dutch show is going to nick the challenges from this, I loved the buzzwire/blind man’s buff task, the trying to direct people over a radio station using songs and the horse racing task (which managed to be a tense and hilarious game of bluff even if I didn’t understand a word, it all came through in tone, body language and direction.) Great stuff.
I’m glad you’re all enjoying it – there are some utterly brilliant and creative challenges in the mix. As Brig says, the guide people via radio station is a highlight. I think the slightly larger scale of the challenges in this series helps the feel of the show – as does the overall lighter tone of the show, there are some hilarious bits in the series.
My favourite moment of the entire series involves pizza. That’s all I’ll say.
I’m surprised the seperate-but-connected challenges haven’t been done as a set-up before, where the value of a challenge is determined by some of the group taking part in a sidetask which also sometimes effects the main challenge.
Beat the Metro is a fun extension of this.
There’s been a couple (usually of the ‘half of you set the time limit, half of you do the actual challenge’ format), but the one that seems most similar is that challenge from the awful live Australian season where five players had to search a cave for prize money and return it to the surface within a time limit, but they only won what they returned if the other two passed a basic ‘fool these people into thinking you’re good tour guides’ task. And then the guides had to sleep in the cave overnight for extra money but the searchers got to decide whether to spend money on camping gear and food.
Any tips to watching it without understanding whats happening ? as would love to watch it but i just kinda think the mole is a show need to atleast have somewhat of an understanding whats going on
In the main the games aren’t that hard to work out (some become much more obvious when they get going, consider likely implications, what is it about what they’re doing that makes it a game?), you do miss things when you don’t know what they’re saying but you can pick up the general gist of conversation with tone, body language, that sort of thing.
Flemish and Dutch is similar in many ways so some of the terms you might have heard with the Dutch show translate directly – a vrijstelling is an exemption in any language.
I might put a basic game guide up here in a few days.
Episode four has been taken down. Alas!
I’m enjoying it, though I always find the language barrier difficult.
With a British proxy you should be able to watch episode 4 with the link above. In Germany it’s blocked due to audio copyright problems (almost every blocked video on youtube in Germany is blocked for this reason), but with a British proxy I could watch it 🙂
Thanks!
Also, episode five has an incredibly funny moment during the pizza delivery challenge after they round the corner and see two delivery men. That’s the sort of humour that makes the Mole, in any language, so brilliant.
So as a point of amusement, based entirely on those brief few-second clips of each player to introduce them I picked the person I thought would be the Mole, and the person I wanted to win.
The person I wanted to win ended up being the Mole, the person I thought was the Mole ended up winning.
Hi – I’m from Belgium and really glad to hear you guys like our show. Any chance you found English subtitles for this season by now? I’m desperately trying to introduce The Mole to an American friend of mine… Or maybe someone can tell me how you “make” subtitles for a tv show and I could give it a go? A new season just started today by the way!
Thanks in advance!
I’m afraid not, and unfortunately I suspect it’s rather complicated, effectively downloading a rip and uploading it to Youtube.
On the other hand, there are Dutch people who do it…
I daresay the best thing to do would be to contact the current Dutch subbers, since I’m sure they’ll have useful advice. I’ve been playing around with softsubs a bit of late (Not my own translation – since I missed them first time around, I’m trying to resurrect the ThatDarkSpark 2013/2014 episodes that have been copyright-violationed off Youtube) and it seems the actual process of applying softsubs to videos isn’t too bad; the hard part would be transcribing the episode with timestamps and translating it.
Someone is translating the Belgian episodes as we speak – search “The Mole, Belgium with English Subs” on YouTube or Dailymotion and the first couple of episodes are up!
Finally got round to watching this over the last three days. It’s a slow burner of a format, but what a payoff, much better than the sum of its parts. Beautifully made and plenty of content per episode in this austere day and age, plus extremely likeable contestants bar none, with plenty of eye candy. The British series are probably the most satisfying to me in terms of the audacity of the sabotages and their explanations, and the Australian series I’ve seen probably had the most exciting challenges; this felt like a fairly low-key production in comparison.
I was nowhere close to guessing the Mole. Suspect after suspect went down for me. Right, onto the second series soon!