Starts 5th January on AVRO.
Ten celebs travel around Colombia taking in the sights and sounds and completing mental and physical tasks to earn money for a group pot, a pot that only one of them will take home. One of the contestants is a double agent, a Mole, working with the production team to try and sabotage the tasks without detection. The winner is not the person who is best at the tasks but the person who best works out who the mole is and tracks their actions as week by week the contestants must take a computer test to determine how much they know, the lowest scorer is immediately sent home.
This year we have a new host in ex-contestant Rik van de Westelaken.
Who are these people?
Probably most important, new host Rik van de Westelaken (middle) – newsreader, quiz show host, sometime host of Moltalk and winner of WIDM 2015 (discussed here). One of the ten celebs behind him will win money by completing tasks and uncovering which one of the ten is being paid to work against the team for our entertainment. But who is the mole?
- Nikkie de Jaeger – Dutch make-up Youtube star. Over 11m subscribers!
- Evelien de Bruijn – DJ and host.
- Jamie Trenité – Adventure and Science show host.
- Evi Hanssen – Flemish presenter, ex-host of Expedition Robinson.
- Rick Paul van Mulligan – Actor.
- Robert van Beckhoven – Professional baker.
- Merel Westrijk – Newsreader and morning show host.
- Niels Litooij – Electronic musical artist
- Sarah Chronis – Actress.
- Sinan Can – documentary maker.
A link to discussion of relevant episodes follows. We thank Friend of The Bar Marieke (here’s her Twitter) for reliably translating episodes in her spare time. We ask our international friends to hold off from commenting on an episode until the subtitled episodes have gone up.
Okay, well.
Merel was my lowest suspect for basically the entire season. And I think the only person I never once thought might be the mole. So… I think I should probably just retire?
For those not in the know, Natalia has posted the first episode of De Mol (in a crazy turnaround time btw) and it is honestly as good as we all hope.
So, firstly, thanks so much Marieke for translating as always. Watching the series is always something we look forward to in our household every year.
I cottoned on to Sarah from the Car Lingo challenge and then got Tunnelvisie. In retrospect, I correctly identified all the moling that happened on the roof of that assignment, but incorrectly assigned it to the wrong rooftop speller.
On a more holistic note, for me, this was a pretty lackluster series. There was something missing, and for me, it seemed like the team behind it this year forgot they were producing a television show – nothing was made for the viewer’s benefit. Some of the games were flat out awful – the beach/torch amount burning (just people shouting numbers); the DJing (I still don’t quite get the rules of that and when they won); the Plinko game (dull watching); the balconies (fundamentally chaotic with zero play-along value), the Columbian flag (a genuinely wonderful feeling and energy killed by the needless “will they do well or badly” gamble twist).
Then there were so many further games that weren’t necessarily bad, but were under-explained and we had to spend well over half the challenge figuring out what was going on. The caged boats challenge exemplified this – when over half the candidates simply don’t understand the challenge, there’s something wrong.
And the molacties are becoming super uneventful. So many of them were “Merel didn’t do her job, and there was no group oversight.” and the rest were “Merel did obviously bad things when she was on her own but we didn’t show you those bits.” Moling when the camera is off isn’t particularly fun – how are we meant to catch that? Sure, the candidates can if they up their level of suspicion but again – this is a TV show and playalong factor is important. Maybe the UK mole was uniquely good in this – but do we remember Tanya’s “scent people up in the hunting dogs challenge” and “sun tan lotion in the banana boats”. These were amazing Mols that just feel so much more clever than anything since then in retrospect.
This season also felt super cheap – summed up by one of the games was “4x Jenga.” You’ve shipped a load of celebs out to Colombia – please do more than playing Jenga in a park! The closing scene under the tree in an average farm was one of the most unremarkable Mol endings I’ve ever seen.
Maybe this has become more of a rant than it needs to be. Dutch Mol is one of the highlights of the TV year – “wij zijn niet in Kiev, vriend” is still one of the only times I’ve audibly gasped at TV and there were good challenges this year (brick factory, red/green screen ziplining, screens with jokers & euro amounts). Hoping for more of a classic in 2020.
I expect that the reason why none of the challenges took advantage of the fact it was in Colombia could be because Colombia could have been a back-up when somewhere else was unavailable
Yeah, I’ve suspected for most of the season that Colombia was a last minute switcheroo. Only the Comuna 13 challenge was really Colombia-themed.
It was much the same when Iceland was a back up for Morocco a few years back. Obviously its hard throwing some new challenges together at short notice, but for most of them they might as well stayed in the Netherlands.
Shameless plug, but we’ve just released the podcast featuring my finale shenanigans – https://rtvwarriors.podbean.com/e/vondelpark-famous/
It’s time for the results of The Suspect List 2019!
Thank you to everyone who took part this year, there were a whopping 31 of you, 18 of whom played for eight or 9 weeks! These statistics are exactly the same as last year – spooky.
This year, the winner did NOT submit a Suspect List each week! They forgot one! The same is true for the person in second place. If that’s not slightly annoying, I don’t know what is.
If you managed to put The Mole at the top of your Suspect List every week, and answer all the bonus questions correctly, and open the correct joker, you would score 142 points. If you chose not to open any joker, then the most you can score is 130 points.
Let’s start with the points for the LIST only. Each line represents [name], [number of weeks entered], and [points].
AprilBride15 8 80
Jack 8 59
RANDOM 9 43
Holger 9 35
Jack Pitts 9 34
Steve L 9 34
Reid W. 9 33
Scott Rux 9 33
Dale 6 30
Gwilym 9 29
Matt Clemson 3 26
AVERAGE 9 25
Liam Davis 9 24
Martin 7 24
TV’s Michael Harmstone 9 23
Nico W. 9 21
Dan Peake 9 20
Harry 2 20
Kerenza Deo (Realeo) 9 20
The Grim Recapper 9 18
Joseph M 2 14
Zeus 9 13
Allan 2 12
Joseph Bolas 8 12
Lukas Eigelis 1 10
Logan 5 9
Clicky (aka Ben) 3 9
Tom F 1 7
Andrew Warren 9 5
Nick Gates 1 4
Sophie 1 3
Chiara 1 2
Brandon 1 1
Jan Peter 1 1
Syp 1 0
AprilBride15 is WAY in the lead here, though Jack has a slim chance – and both of them only played eight weeks!
If you do the wisdom of crowds, and decide to enter a Suspect List based on the average Moliness of each candidate each week, you get the AVERAGE entry. 25 points this year, compared to 48 for the equivalent statistic last year – Merel was a tough Mole to pin down. Annoyingly, the RANDOM entry seemed to like Merel, and did far too well for its own good.
The bonus points changed quite little this year, though again scores for the bonus points were down compared to last year. But what did change things was the choice of whether to open the joker or not. The joker that was opened randomly by twitter poll was JOKER TWO. Here’s the final scores, with all the points included:
(Name, weeks entered, list points, bonus points, joker choice, joker points, final score)
AprilBride15 8 80 12 No open 10 102
Jack 8 59 12 (no choice) 10 81
Gwilym 9 29 6 OPEN #2 25 60
RANDOM 9 43 9 No open 8 60
TV’s Michael Harmstone 9 23 3 OPEN #2 25 51
Nico W. 9 21 3 OPEN #2 25 49
The Grim Recapper 9 18 6 OPEN #2 25 49
Holger 9 35 12 No open 1 48
Scott Rux 9 33 15 OPEN #1 0 48
Matt Clemson 3 26 9 (no choice) 13 48
Jack Pitts 9 34 6 No open 4 44
Reid W. 9 33 9 No open 1 43
Steve L 9 34 6 OPEN #1 0 40
Dale 6 30 6 (no choice) 2 38
Joseph Bolas 8 12 0 OPEN #2 25 37
Liam Davis 9 24 6 No open 3 33
Martin 7 24 6 No open 3 33
AVERAGE 9 25 3 No open 1 29
Dan Peake 9 20 3 OPEN #1 0 23
Harry 2 20 3 (no choice) 0 23
Kerenza Deo (Realeo) 9 20 3 OPEN #1 0 23
Joseph M 2 14 0 (no choice) 7 21
Zeus 9 13 3 OPEN #1 0 16
Allan 2 12 3 (no choice) 0 15
Logan 5 9 3 OPEN #1 0 12
Clicky (aka Ben) 3 9 3 (no choice) 0 12
Tom F 1 7 3 (no choice) 0 10
Lukas Eigelis 1 10 0 (no choice) 0 10
Andrew Warren 9 5 0 No open 0 5
Nick Gates 1 4 0 (no choice) 0 4
Brandon 1 1 3 (no choice) 0 4
Sophie 1 3 0 No open 0 3
Chiara 1 2 0 (no choice) 0 2
Jan Peter 1 1 0 No open 0 1
Syp 1 0 0 (no choice) 0 0
AprilBride15 wins! Jack wasn’t able to catch them up – and the one week they didn’t submit was the week with the joker decision. If they had taken part that week, they could have chosen to open joker two, then they could have won. An important decision, it turns out – the tables could have been very different you had all chosen differently.
Also, only three people managed score better than the random entry. Hmph.
The graph of how much people are suspected each week can be found on the “Week by Week graph” tab of this google doc spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DOSM0WkOEpBkjd2tt_5_ZMah36cqYJ5_E0XJK-jJ5nI/edit?usp=sharing
Sinan is the least suspected contestant, ever! The person we suspected most in Week 1 was Evi, who was then promptly eliminated. The most suspected in Week 2 was Evelien, who was then promptly eliminated. Sarah was always our top suspect by a country mile, with Merel very low down, only making it into the middle of the pack in the final week.
In the other tabs of the spreadsheet you can see what everyone put each week, see the averages, see some nice pretty graphs and see the final league tables with all the scores. Basically, geek out over it.
Thank you to everyone who took part, and I look forward to seeing you all again for The Suspect List 2020.
Success!
Dan
Thanks for hosting this again Dan! It’s a constant surprise and pleasure to somehow fall arse-backwards into a fifth place finish again. Six years in the top 5 baby!
I really wish real life hadn’t got in the way, now, scraping into the top ten based on just three weeks of play is frustratingly good!
Now to utterly screw up the Belgian list.
Thanks for running this again and congrats to AprilBride15 ! Im surprised I scored as high as I did as I missed a few weeks. But it wouldnt have helped as I was so far off track.
Thanks Dan for putting this together again this year! My one goal this time was to do better than I did last year, which I did by a measly three points! But I was much lower in the final ranking because of that blasted joker twist! I knew I should have opened it! I appreciate how you put that twist in, though. It’s cool how that could play a big part in people’s rankings. Until next year—maybe I’ll improve by three more points again each year, lol! Seriously though, your efforts in putting this together are very much appreciated—it’s a fun way to have some friendly competition with other WIDM fans.