Sundays from March 8th, 7:55pm (CET)
Vier, Belgium
Belgian Mole is BACK and this time Gilles de Coster has bought ten people along for an adventure of a lifetime in Greece. They must work as a team to earn money for a pot that one of them will take home. Unfortunately one of them is not to be trusted. The winner is the person who can best answer the question wie is… de mol?
But who are they?
- Bruno, 50, a technical director
- Laure, 46, a management assistant
- Bart, 43, a lawyer
- Dorien, 27, a sauna manageress
- Salim, 28, a cinema shop manager
- Els, 51, a teacher
- Christian, 26, a consultant
- Alina, 20, a speech therapy student
- Gilles, 29, a hospitality manager
- Julien, 26, a bank clerk.
It sounds like we’re *probably* getting English subs, although they may take a bit longer than usual and we’re very appreciative for the effort. Until we know what’s going on, the standard ‘please don’t spoil until the English subs turn up’ rule applies, we’re a UK site with a mainly UK audience. I thank our international friends for their consideration.
EDIT: Right, as it looks like we’re probably not getting translations for the forseeable, I’m relaxing the chat ban somewhat. For people who want to talk about untranslated episodes, you can do so from Monday 9am after the episode has gone out. Each episode chat will get a little bit of spoiler space and you can jump to the relevant episode chat from the top of the page if you want to wait.
Links to the chat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dwxHEkOZKw&list=TLGGHM3ANkAaSa4wMjAzMjAyMA seems like we will be getting subs. OMG that opening
also says in description section It’s a super long premiere, so please be patient with me
Natalia has said the premiere is going to be subtitled. I don’t know about the rest, but it might be uploaded a bit later than the usual superhuman speed.
Always appreciate your efforts Natalia, thanks very much.
Yes it is very much appreciated, the excitement is already at peak levels after Cafe De Mol…I mean come on they’ve started messing with the candidates A MONTH before setting off this year!!!
Also pretty cool that Christian was able to take part in all the challenges apart from cars
Predictably the biggest suspect so far on the Cafe De Mol poll is the contestant named ‘Gilles’
Well, yes. Because he’s clearly Sam Nixon.
I’m so excited.
EPISODE ONE DISCUSSION STARTS
Links are in the usual place.
Quick work! Thanks very much!
Verdomme! Belgian Mol continues to be a cinematic feast! That consistency of visual language always makes me smile, the soundtrack is always on-point, and the use of aspect ratio? Mwah. I’m hyped for the season.
The escape task is a first challenge staple, and put to good use here, and the second task was also very good.
Interesting to see 100% profit on an episode… Albeit profit that still hasn’t put the contestants in the green.
And the classic first episode cliffhanger for good measure. Warm fuzzies!
Oh, and, uhhh, poor Gilles.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah so good. This is going to be the year of swoopy drone shots I see.
That second challenge though manages to be quite complex and involved, yet it all made sense and was edited for maximum laughs as well. A cut above.
Two pieces of dialogue that tickled me: Alina (I think) casually asking Bart if he chose Money For Nothing in the car (even though this doesn’t quite work if you think about it), and Salim’s casual dwarf tossing joke on the island.
Christian looks exactly like Passe-Partout on Fort Boyard. I actually think there’s a half decent chance he’s The Mole, there was one person he says looked like he’s seen them before, and that person is… GILLES DE COSTER. Otherwise I think they’re editing Bruno for a classic late-stage shock elimination.
How sunburnt is Gilles going to be before the end of the series?
Will anyone open the box?
I can’t WAIT to find out!
“Ah a nice normal execution…WHAT?!” Is that the first time in Mole history that the elimination screen has shown something other than the elimination screen?
I was a bit shocked by the elimination too, they made a throwaway “It’s me” comment just before the red screen which was of course probably far too obvious to be a clue
Also quote of the week
Alina : “I’ll kill you Dorien and Christian!”
Dorien “Nice sunshine!”
Yeah, the juxtapositioning in that task was really great.
Julien and Christan are my early suspects.
I’m really hoping it is Christan, and that his story at the very beginning ties directly into his task as the Mole and they rewind and show him getting a chair and putting on a cloak to look like the mole did at the beginning. And they can revisit his story about being able to do anything… including being The Mole ;).
Psychologically, if you see the Mole as this mystery taller red cloaked figure (you’re in a chair, they’re higher than you) that you’re looking up at and don’t actually start for a few days, that one meeting with the mole will be settled in your subconscious to a degree and then when you meet everyone your subconscious would be less likely to think it’s the shorter individual because you’re always looking down at that individual.
I’m convincing myself more and more on this the more I think about it!
Blatant self-promotion as always, but First Suspicions is back this season too. Form will be open till the second episode airs on Sunday and I’ll keep an eye on it during the season (far better than I have with WIDM hopefully)!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScMcA0fHxF6g7pIlpiJd712jsAmiqJQUJw6OS9j2z4YQK6eyA/viewform
It’s going to be Pandora’s Box isn’t it?
It’s *totally* going to be Pandora’s Box. I’m just wondering which direction they’re going to take with it. On one hand, it could be the annual paint bomb, but possibly with more tricks attached (everyone else’s name is in there too, the name is written on some sort of terrible creature a la Boyard, etc.). On the other hand, I think it’d be funny if someone opens the box and they can clearly see the Mole’s name, but they’re trapped in that little alcove and unable to collect information for the rest of the day, ensuring their execution unless someone fills them in.
I don’t know if anyone’s played The Resistance: Avalon, but I wonder if there’s any mileage in one person KNOWING who The Mole is but has to get through to the end without The Mole (who doesn’t know who it is) somehow calling them out on it, Merlin style, or be instantly eliminated?
It’s 100% Pandora’s Box – they teased it in the season trailer a few weeks ago.
The contestants know that they won’t be given that information in a simple way, so they’re going to be trying to work out what the catch is before they open it, when one contestant suddenly says “fuck it” and opens the box, pissing the others off. At least, that’s my prediction.
Alina is immediately a favourite, aided by the absolutely wonderful editing on the second task.
Slightly intrigued by the fact that I believe the names entered in the elimination were in alphabetical order, but skipped one (well, two, but one had a exemption!)… but I think Belgian Mole has done the “Mole’s name was never entered into the laptop” as a clue before, so it seems a bit unlikely they’d reuse it.
Random thought in part comparing this with the Dutch version: when did we lose “receiving the mole books” – and occasional games involving them – as part of the underlying story of the Dutch show? And the family visit? I’m sure both those were A Thing in the Dutch version in the past but have been lost, but they’re still part of the whole ceremony of the show here.
Maybe that’s a back-to-basics aspect Dutch mole could benefit from, just a *touch* more ritual and ceremony to the game itself.
This show is just so full of ideas, and going the extra mile, and being better than it needs to be, in a way that other versions aren’t. Wonderful.
Thank you so much, Natalia!
That premiere episode was so good! I am already in awe with this season than the whole Dutch Mole Season 20 combined.
Anyways, has anybody noticed that Alina already knew Gilles name beforehand? She then countered it with asking for Gilles’ name again. But on the other hand, I know De Mol is a carefully edited show and they cannot really let a slip-up from a mole into the episode.
I made this comment under Natalia’s channel and she corrected me by saying it was actually Jolien that knew Gilles’ name beforehand.
Yooooo, as always Belgium comes out of the gates with a brilliant opening.
… and I typed that just from the introduction of the players, and their meeting with the mole, but then all the astonishing cinematography to introduce Greece as the location, and then the opening game with them all stranded on cliffs, and Gilles’s voice echoing around… GOD. This show is so incredible.
Also, it’s going to be confusing to have a contestant named Gilles, haha.
The editing when the people were rapelling me and cutting to them looking at the clock, the way the clock was filmed, the creepy Sound of Silence cover… this show is so perfect. Also, the way the clocks were being filmed kinda reminded me of Saw.
Also that edit when it cut away from Bruno’s clock at 7500, then cut back to that number and started counting up again for Bart was really clever. Also, mad respect to Gilles and Christian for both going for 0, and Julien for going so low too.
Christian saying that he’s used to seeing people react to seeing him for the first time, and someone looked like they saw him for the second time was striking. Also backing up slightly, I thought it was cool that Salim talked about the prejudice he faces with people crossing the street (but he was also really funny about it – “maybe their house is that side! and when I have my dog with me, everyone comes up to say hi!”), and Alina talking about having been ‘illegal’ for so long.
The island challenge was fun, every aspect was cool and it was interesting how they interacted (or could have interacted, in the case of Bart helping from his kayak). And I do respect his effort to ‘redeem’ himself.
… Gilles is so handsome, as ever. And so is Gilles, for that matter.
But damn, I’m really sad he got eliminated. Not only did I respect the 0 bid, he seemed genuinely cool, and he was obviously passionate about the game. Seeing him cry, and Gilles giving him a hug was touching.
OH FUCK ANOTHER TWIST. THE BELGIAN VERSION GOES HARD. Crap. I can’t get over how riveting this show is.
Ep 2 is in the usual place.
Best friends, this first challenge is already AMAZING!
WHAT AN EPISODE…another favourite candidate of mine GONE…and then just to further mind f**k the mole diary is back!1!1
THIS. SHOW. God I’m glad we get to experience this.
The box was genius…
I just wished someone had opened it… because they could have done the unthinkable…
They could have took all the names except their own, left their own name in the box. And then leave and hope someone else opened it up. I suspect the producers were hoping this might occur. Such a brilliant missed opportunity!
This show just keeps on giving. And they are just doing it on a regular 8th season! (Shade to the 20th WIDM season).
The two challenges were too good. The Belgian production always designs it in a way that it actually looks plausible to do it, and also has a nice ring to it. Where can we find the dedication to actually make a board game out of a task? And that “wedding” they organized was so fun. They redid a concept where the contestants had to blend in a group of locals singing/dancing and a jury has to select who belonged or not. *SEASON 5 SPOILER ALERT* This was when they put the mole in S5 to sabotage *SEASON 5 SPOILER ALERT* so I’m looking closely at Jolien and Salim now.
Also, they are wearing De Mol customized shirts! I want one but I live so far away from Belgium sadly.
* Bart is *such* a card.
* Incredible sweatshirts.
* Great bit of planning with Pandora’s Box. We tricked you! But no really, here’s our *rather clever reveal*. They should rename this show “Gilles De Coster’s Rather Clever Reveal Show”.
* Excellent tasks as ever. When it was suggested at the Greek Heads challenge that if they lost they’d have to go right back to the start I was going to assume that was going to be the same for all challenges – in many ways they planted the joke in your head before the actual information was revealed. The wedding was quite a fun take on the timeline challenge they’ve used in the past.
* Poor Bruno, I liked him.
Another very, very good episode.
Here’s a very silly theory, presented purely as alternate universe fanfiction rather than a serious suggestion, because the really clever editing means that we can’t absolutely rule it out, and it’s fun to think about in a purely abstract sense.
The show didn’t make it absolutely clear what Jolien and Laure did with Pandora’s Box between 5am and 6am that night. It’s possible that they might have looked inside and maybe, or maybe not, saw the name of the Mole. The very serious consequences include that everyone has to keep up a pretence that they haven’t done, including what becomes a fake (non-)revelation of the box contents. Conceivably they would be able to avoid elimination every time, until reaching (e.g.) the final four, at which point it is revealed that the serious consequence was that they were disqualified from winning and that the final four are made up of a winner, a Mole, and two disqualified contestants. While this probably wouldn’t be as satisfying as a normal conclusion to a season, it would be so shocking that it would be a satisfying and memorable conclusion to a unique piece of gameplay, carried on to its natural conclusion, in its own right.
On another matter, I think Jolien is very attractive. I wonder to what extent her attractive appearance made her a strong candidate contestant, and I wonder to what extent she is attractive in part because she’s a contestant playing a game as remarkable as this?
Maybe they should upload at least the highlights of what was talked about in the part it fast forwarded past.
So, this ‘alphabetical order except one’ factor seems to be true for Ep2 as well, but on a different person. Guess that suggests it’s a deliberate red herring, but for the sake of completeness:
Ep1 went in alphabetical order from Alina, Els was omitted
Ep2 went in alphabetical order from Jolien – the next player after the eliminated player, looping to the start after Selim; Alina is omitted.
I’ll be intrigued to see if the first person Gilles enters into the laptop next week is Christian.
Oh, I also wanted to mention – just as a minor production values thing – the absolutely gorgeous shot at the start of the wedding sequence where the cars park and the candidates get out as the camera – on a drone, I assume – flies *in* through the car window and out the other side before pulling up to see the wedding being set up in the distance. Glorious.
I say this in the podcast, but this show is amazing. The production values are sky-high, and they do it on a very limited budget. The care and attention that goes into it is second-to-none and you can feel the effort to make it as amazing as possible from pretty much every production decisions.
Also, OPA!
Haha, just listening to your podcast on WIDM reunion and it dawned on me on the return flight home that I had left my headphones in the seat pocket…of the outgoing flight <_<
Oh, I was *mortified* on Friday. I had a really bad day.
As ever, this show is incredible. Echoing the comment about the shot as they arrived at the wedding challenge. Which was just fun all around. “Salim, I think we should put you in the back.” Bart carrying the dog and saying, “I know how you feel.” Christian awkwardly trying to pour the oversized champagne bottle. This show’s devious sense of humour is part of what puts it so far above anything else.
I already really like this group; I loved how much fun they were having in the tent. Especially when Jolien was interviewing and kept getting interrupted by the laughter coming from behind her.
The box was hilariously devious, particularly because I fully expected the twist.. but not the SECOND twist. Brilliant. And Gilles did it so well, with the astonishing gravitas he always displays.
So, so good.
The point about Jolien’s interview is something I noticed as well, it doesn’t pretend that everything else suddenly stops when the confessionals are being filmed, on other shows they probably would have tried to get everyone else to be quiet for a moment or done it somewhere else.
It adds to the vibe of the show feeling like a travelogue first and a game second. Outside of the challenges/executions, the vibe is more “Papa Bear Gilles de Coster’s Magical Mystery Tour” than a game of sabotage and deception.
I have no idea if/when Eng subs for ep 3 are coming, so from 6pm tonight I will watch it in Belgian and lift the discussion curfew.
We’ve podcasted about it based on the unsubbed version, so that’ll be released as normal at 9pm!
Right, so, if you want to know what the challenges are, here they are. It’s well edited, so it’s still pretty easy to follow, although doubtless *some* of the character driven stuff is lost without the subs. You’ll need a VPN and then to sign up to SBS’s missed shows service.
This is non-spoilerriffic with regards to results.
Task 1: Teams split into two teams of four and each team has their own boat they will paddle down the river. To earn money, each team will take time out twice along the river to perform tasks. To keep the money, the teams must reach the finish line within ten seconds of each other. To makes things more interesting, the teams are told that whichever team crosses the line first will get some interesting information which might help them find the mole.
Mini-task 1: Teams must stop and try and break urns with monetary values on them, each one adding cash, using a slingshot. However one of the urns is marked by blindfolds, and if that one gets smashed then the next stage of the river paddling must be done with two people wearing blindfolds.
Mini-task 2: Rock stacking. Each team must make a tower of at least seven rocks, most of which marked with cash amounts, and one which if it’s used allows them to remove the blindfolds.
The winning team gets to watch the videos of the interview room where Gilles tells people they’re on the show.
Task 2: Split into two groups again.
Task 2-1: An archaeological dig! There are around twenty places marked out with flags, most of them with an associated Euro value, and two marked with question marks. On the table is a timeline split into five different eras. In one hour, the team must dig up the objects and at the end place one correctly in each period, if they do that, they win the value of the objects that was flagged. If they fail they get zero. There are two bigger dig sites – one with a lamp and one with a video recorder in it worth big money, and they get the use of a JCB to dig in those ones – with no training. What’s in the question mark sites? A metal detector and the instructions for the JCB digger. (This is one where I fear I might have missed something somewhere).
Task 2-2: The other subteam will be taught the basics of sculpting. They will then scuplt models representing all eight remaining contestants out of… feta cheese! If subteam one can identify all the sculptures, by putting the correct nametags in the right places, they win €2,000.
Everyone gets very drunk.
Task 3: The eight are split into six and two. Subteam one will remain on the island, subteam two are taken to library. This game is about mythological creatures and based around Thesus and the minotaur. ST1 on the island have a board with the names of six mythical creatures, of the sort that tend to have the body of one creature and the head of the other and 18 (?) half-creature puzzle pieces. They phone up the research duo and put those ones all together. That’s not worth anything though. With the remaining pieces they must make six *more* creatures, each worth €1,000 and to do that they must clip onto a winding rope and progress through a course through the forest – six different ropes, during each one is a sign with the name of a creature, and at the end three possible pieces that could complete the puzzle. So far, no jeopardy. However. Each runner is hooked up to a heart monitor. Before entering the forest, they must decide how many of their 7,000 heartbeats they want to use for the attempt. In the forest lives the minotaur and it’s attracted to fear – if at any point the player’s heart rate goes above 120, the minotaur will start hunting them, but will lie down again if the heart rate reduces. However run out of heartbeats and the alarm goes off and the minotaur will hunt until the player escapes, or they’re caught and out of the game. The team can do as many runs as they like, although once an amount of heartbeats has been removed from the bank they’re gone after the attempt.
Blimey – that reads very complicatedly, but it seems fine on television.
Then it’s the test and execution.
You don’t even need a VPN now,the geoblock has gone, but you do need to put in a valid Belgian postcode. I put in 4 random digits and luckily it was OK, if only there was something in a recent episode that involved postcodes…
I’ve not finished watching the episode yet, but when all the contestants got drunk I hoped it was going to lead to a similar twist to the heist task from the South Africa season. Just reading the description, the last challenge reads like it was inspired by 1000 Heartbeats and that Doctor Who episode where a Minotaur feeds off fear.
It’s like you’ve listened to the podcast already!
I hadn’t actually no, I did think about it but I changed my mind because I obviously don’t want anything spoiled. Just shows that I have no original ideas.
Just copying John R’s message from a different post:
For anyone that hasn’t skipped ahead with the Belgian Mole, the community have kindly put together subtitles for Episode 3 whilst Natalia is away/busy
Hi everybody, we made subtitles for Episode 3 for our friends and will share them with you. They are not as good as Natalia’s, I hope you do not mind. The subtitles are the .ass files in the Google Drive you can find here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eJ30uVSrZLl4Bnl_ozXEehhhgD7vIwcs . You probably need VLC Media Player to play the video with subtitles. Instructions on downloading the episodes are also available. If you want to help out with translation of the next episodes, leave a reply!
YOU want one, I want one, get your personalised Mol t/Sweat-shirts here! https://www.jbc.be/nl-be/demol/
In other news Bart continues to be *hilarious*. Such great editing as ever (*BANG!* “FUCK!”, “Don’t touch my beer!”).
IT DOESN’T SHIP TO THE UK AND I WANT ONE!
(and yes, Bart is the gift that keeps on giving.)
I will wait patiently weeks/months for the subs, understandably Natalia probably has far more important mstters happening at the moment in real life, I *think* she moved to New York for a new job last year so it must be awful being there whilst her family is miles away
I doubt they’ll even be able to do a proper reumion episode this year either, they’ll probably have to reunite via Skype or something which sort of sucks when Gilles and the team have put such a huge effort into producing the series, quite crazy to think how much things have escalated in just the couple of weeks since the Wie Is De Mol finale…
Very much same patiently waiting in Subs as I just don’t think I could stumble through the episode without having any clue what’s going on
Or as it’s known now, “doing a Johan”.
Right, as it looks like we’re probably not getting translations for the forseeable, I’m relaxing the chat ban somewhat. For people who want to talk about untranslated episodes, you can do so from Monday 9am after the episode has gone out. Each episode chat will get a little bit of spoiler space and you can jump to the relevant episode chat from the top of the page if you want to wait.
So you can start discussing Episode 4
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Now.
This fucking show, man.
Here’s this week’s challenge list:
The team drive to Athens, the birthplace of democracy. To represent this, the group must privately vote on which two of them should be the Group Representatives (?). The GRs will make all the decisions on this episode.
Task 1: The GRs split the seven into groups of three (musically inclined people) and four. To win money, both teams must arrive outside parliament before the guards change in two hours time.
Subteam 1: The musically inclined team are given a map of the Athens underground but the stop names have been replaced by potential answers to multiple choice quiz questions. They must ride the underground to the appropriate places (if they pick wrong they waste time), and at the correct stations are challenges – Stop 1: name the artists of the songs being played by the busking musician (each of whom have some connection to Greece), four songs, €250 each. Stop two: Street dancing, or in this case rope skipping, all three must keep up a rope skip for 60 consecutive seconds for €1,000. Finally stop three: The contestants are given karaoke kit and a songbook of twenty songs. They must try and get an audience of twenty people to listen to them for twenty seconds for €1,000.
Subteam 2: Urban golf – Three “holes” have been set up around the city, the object is to hit the ball against the statue to hole out. However one person is wearing a helmet with the club attached to the forehead, one if wearing long-sighted (?) binoculars, the other two must putt with the front one blindfolded and guided by the person behind (?). They can choose who goes next after each shot, but they’ve only got ten shots each to get round the course. Each hole is worth €1,000.
Everyone gets to stay in a swish hotel overnight, the GRs get a penthouse suite to themselves with jacuzzi and everything.
Task 2: The GRs split the group into 5 and 2 (who presumably like eating). The two are sent to a greek restaurant. The other five, unbeknownst to the pair, are sent to a gym.
Restaurant Team: Are given a menu and each item has a large amount of money attached (which I believe is the kilocalorie value rounded to the nearest €100). It seems like they’re challenged to eat as much as they can in two hours as that will determine the prize money. For €1,000 they’ll be asked three questions about the food afterwards.
Fitness Team: Are told that to win the money, they’ll have to burn up collectively the amount of calories the restaurant team are eating. They can see the restaurant team on a hidden camera, and a counter with the amount of calories eaten (as food is bought out to the table, stuff not eaten is calculated and occasionally removed from the total) and the amount of calories burned. About twenty minutes before the end, a teleshopping video appears in the gym pointing out a piece of equipment the teams haven’t been using. The team has to work out that it’s connected to a telephone that, if charged enough, they can call the Restaurant team on a hidden phone and tell them to stop. However the phone also needs a pincode to unlock, and the teleshopping video also hints at another piece of equipment which when is activated pumps out a well known tune to the athlete’s rhythm but with a word in the lyrics beeped out. That word is the PIN of the phone.
Task 3: The five non GR players are taken to an airfield. They will jump out of a plane, €500 for each person who does it, however there are only four parachutes so one will be unable to jump.
After jumping, or not, each contestant sits in a chair in a large semi-circle around a hangar. They can’t communicate with each other.
Inside the Hangar, the two GRs will interrogate the five other contestants to try and work out who jumped or not. Before the game begins, they can play to either double the amount of money earned in the game (losing it all if they’re wrong) or they can play for 10 Pasvragen (question passes, jokers) to split as they wish. Fail, and the five other contestants get 2 PV each and the GRs get none. Their decision is kept hidden. The five other contestants are aware of what the choice entails but not what was chosen. The GRs get 45 minutes to interrogate the other contestants one at a time.
SPOILERS:
Needless to say, there is fallout.
Might be one of the best episodes in terms of challenges they’ve ever done. And the *editing*.
The group of four in Game 1 are those with good hand-eye coordination.
I don’t think the front person in the golf pair was blindfolded – I think the handicap was just being strapped to someone else.
The time limit of that challenge was being there before the end of the Changing of the Guard.
The question they were asked after the meal was which three food items had incorrect items put in them – one was the dessert with a tomato I think.
They don’t get the money in the final challenge unless they pick the doubler.
The other incorrect item at the restaurant was whatever had lamb in it when it was supposed to have beef, I can’t remember what it was called.
I don’t if this has been a problem for anyone else, but the episode won’t play past 22 seconds in, it won’t let me skip past it and it always freezes at that point. If this has happened to anyone else,how did you fix it?
Never mind, after trying everything I could think of it works. I just had to sign out of the player and go back into it again.
🙁 the subs dont seem to be coming as much as i love the mole it just cant keep my attention having no clue whats going on
Where are you finding the episodes? I’m not sure where to look. Thanks!
We’re finding them on the website of the channel it’s broadcast on, at https://www.vier.be/video/de-mol/de-mol-s8 with no subtitles but it’s easy enough to muddle through.
Thanks! Unfortunately it keeps telling me that the video is not available abroad. I’ll try to figure something else out. Any suggestions are welcome.
We always suggest being prepared to pay for a VPN precisely for moments like these. That is the easiest way, but it’s not free unfortunately.
Windscribe is a free (10Gb/month) VPN which I’ve successfully used for Schlag den Stars in the past when other routes have failed.
Did you hear that Germany has a new season of the mole coming out in May?
We did indeed! With some of the Belgian team behind it as well, so fingers crossed it’s good.
Anyone else spot the Icelandic Eurovision 2020 song in this week’s ep?
EPISODE FIVE DISCUSSION:
There doesn’t seem much point in waiting so…
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GO!
Episode 5 challenge list:
It’s Friends and Family week! But first:
Task 1 The team will become paparazzi. Split into two groups of three.
Subteam 1: Will get a crash course in paparazzi.
Subteam 2: Will stake out the three locations the celeb will be papped.
They then split up into three teams of two, one team for each location. The celeb, and his bodyguards, will mill about each area for fifteen minutes whilst his minders try and keep him secret. Our teams must try and get the best pap shot possible. However, as a bonus, three of the friends and family will be milling about, one in each location, pretending to do some sort of job. If they can pap them from description alone they’ll earn a €500 bonus for each. That leaves the other three F and F to try and work out who the Flemish celeb is from the pap pictures taken, each correct identification is worth €1,000.
(The celebrity is none other than legendary singer and presenter Willy Sommers).
Task 2: Backseat driving.
The contestants and their F and F are split into two groups, of two contestants and their F and F who will watch proceedings in an air traffic control tower and four contestants who will be driving around in blacked out cars.
Drivers: Drivers cannot see anything outside, but a camera attached to the top of the car sends a live feed to their backseat pasenger. Around the airfield are eight gates worth varying amounts of cash, from €25 to €600. To earn money to play the second part of the task with they must simply drive through the gates without knocking the poles, and then drive to a ‘Taxi Zone’ to the right of the airfield – failure to do so means no money to play with, and indeed no extra information for part two given. In front of them on the dash is a light, they can only drive when the light is on, as determined by their teammates in the watchtower. Also dotted about are piles of luggage, avoid these or there’s a penalty.
Traffic controllers: have the map of all the money in front of them and can push buttons to make the cars go and stop. However, to actually communicate with the cars, the F and F must score fifty points on a game of Crossy Road to release the walkie talkies. Both sets of players are on different levels and each set can only communicate with two of the cars.
Part two: The airstrip is split into zones, several x0, a large x1 followed by a large x2, and a smaller x3 target further down the runway. The contestant must drive the car as fast as they like (as suggested by their teammates in the watchtower, but when they hit the Take Off line they must take their foot off the accelerator and let the car glide to a halt, wherever they land is what will happen to the money earned in part one. People who didn’t earn any money in part one but made it to the taxi zone still get to play, they can be used as test runs.
And then, the elimination. But oh! It appears to stop part way though!
Task three: The contestants each get to privately see their elimination screen – green or red. The team must try and pick the person they think got the red screen by launching marked fireworks, which will explode green or red. They get three chances. If they correctly pick the correct person on one of the three attempts, that person is eliminated and the group earn €2,000. However, if they fail to find the correct person, each person must take five extra questions there and then and the elimination settled on the new scores – knowing that one of them is aware they’ve been on the wrong track and can try and save themselves.
The person with the lowest new score is eliminated.
Or are they? Because as they’re driving away The Mole appears hooded on their dashboard, suggesting that they weren’t the lowest scoring player and that they have an offer for them…
NB: I have very much muddled my way through Task 3, so if anyone can shed light on anything I got wrong that’d be useful.
No! Not Salim!
No! Not Salim!
The backseat driving was funny as.
Think you were spot on on the third task – it matches what I have in my notes.
Well there seems no point in waiting, you can discuss Episode 6…
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NOW!
This show. THIS F-ING SHOW.
Right, task list for Episode 6:
In the hotel room, Alina and Jolien are having a dance and Alina falls over and has to have an ice pack applied to her ankle.
The team of five (plus Salim, in secret), travel to the birthplace of the Olympics! They’ll be given a crash course in the five events of the traditional pentathlon (Long jump, discus, javelin, wrestling, 100m sprint). The team will put one of themselves forward for each event. In each event they’ll play against an elderly Greek Champion, ages ranging from 54-80. The player gets two goes, an initial one, then the Champion will set a target and enable the contestant to watch technique, then they’ll get a second and final go. In the wrestling, the contestant must either win or avoid getting pinned for two minutes.
Each victory gives the final contestant an extra 5m headstart in the 100m sprint, and they’re given 5m for free. If they beat the Champion to claim the cup, the team wins €3,000. However, this final Champion isn’t really a Champion, it’s Salim who WAS in fact eliminated from the previous week but made up to look like an 82 year old. If he wins the race, he takes home €1,500 for himself.
Task 2: Never Have I Ever
(NB: I’m guessing a bit based on very limited Flemish and reactions here)
The team and Gilles are at dinner and he suggests going for drinks, but of course one person has to be designated driver and won’t be drinking. In fact they’ll be watching the following game with cameras from a car. The game is based on the drinking favourite Never Have I Ever (but in reverse, I think) – on the application form were lots of different yes/no questions. Bart has a list of these statements in the car. In each round he will select two statements. If a statement applies to you, you drink a shot of 50%+ ouzo. If not, you earn €50 for your bank. After each round, one of them must leave the game and “dance” their way across a beam (one foot in front, one foot behind) – successfully get to the end and the money is banked. Fall off and it’s gone. You get to help pick the statements also. Statements worth €100, €200 and €350 in subsequent rounds, and the beam is less wide.
The team wake up very hungover. Apart from one of them.
Task 3: Dinner With The Mole
At breakfast, the team get a card with a phrase that suggests that only the winner will win a big prize today.
They drive to what seems to be a school. There are five classrooms – in each one a task, and also in each one each person can win €1,000 for the pot, however finish last in any of the tasks and you’re eliminated and lose any money earned. It’s another earn money for a personal bank task that may or may not be won in the end, basically.
Subtask 1: Art class. Behind the curtain is a nude model, draped with eight different types of fruit of varying quantities. All the contestants have to do is memorise the fruits and the quantities and draw them, holding their drawings up to a camera in the door. They each start with €1,000 but drop €100 every time they have to turn around and look at the model.
Subtask 2: PE. The contestants are blindfolded and wear a helmet with a cactus on it, all they have to do is burst a balloon whilst blindfolded. At any point a contestant can stand in the corner of the room and remove their blindfold to work out their position in relation to the balloon, but every time they do this they lose €250 from the €1,000 on offer in this room.
Subtask 3: Dance?
Contestants put on costumes with twenty items of Greek food pinned on to them, and their hands tied behind their back. The first two to get all the food off go through. I’m afraid I don’t know how the money worked here, they came to an agreement to eat a certain amount off each other before racing to shake off the rest.
Subtask 4: CDT
In front of the two final contestants: a block of ice with a key in it and some sort of chisel. The first person to get the ice out wins. Also on offer are various other tools and implements they can buy the use of out of the €1,000 on offer in the room. The first person to get the key out gets to have dinner… with the mole.
Subtask 5: Dinner With The Mole
The contestant is led into a candlelit room and a table laid out with five cloches. Behind a screen, like on episode one, is The Mole wearing a hood. The contestant will use what they’ve banked to buy what’s under each cloche, €500 a pop, and can walk away with the remaining money for the group pot at any time. The prizes are: Money doubler, a chance to look at the Mole Books of the eliminated contestants (?), an envelope with the name of the person Salim put as The Mole in his last quiz in and 2 pasvragen/question passes/jokers. However under one of the cloches is a Bankrupt – pick this and they lose the remaining money and they ALSO lose any of the other prizes they have bought.
Test and elimination. Next week: THIS! IS! SPARTAAAAAA!
Big LOLZ at the Olympic task, especially the final race against Salim where apparently nobody can run without falling over. And when I say “nobody” I mean, obviously, Bart.
Also quite enjoyed Drunk Christian. I think Bart and Christian sharing a hotel room isn’t just the sitcom we need, but the sitcom we deserve.
I’m just going to come out and say it – I think Bart is The Mole. I reckon he’s very good at playing up his character so that when things go wrong, it’s just Bart being Bart, but in much more of a sly way than Johan. Of course taking €10k from the pot in episode one makes it look like it can’t be him, but increasingly reckon it’s a double bluff.
Also props for the super whizzy drone flyround of the school as the contestants were coming in, a bit like a real life version of being introduced to Navi in Ocarina of Time.
Spot on with the task descriptions. (Obviously, as the past two weeks of podcasts have proven, take my understanding with a pinch of salt)
For the wetsuit challenge, they had forty pieces of a Greek salad attached to them – each one that was eaten off them was worth €25 for their personal bank. Obviously this led to negotiations and then a deeply disturbing scene.
Never Have I Ever was played with Bart choosing the statements, and people drinking if they’d done it as normal. €50 per non-drink in R1, €100 in R2, €200 in R3 and €350 in R4. Statements included “Never have I pissed in a pool”, “Never have I voted for bullshit” and “Never have I had a same-sex kiss”.
Salim’s make-up was *awful*. Like, he took his glasses off and everyone instantly IDed him.
It was so blatantly him that it wouldn’t surprise me if there was supposed to be a “guess which one of these people isn’t actually old” element to it but the producers dropped that part of the challenge after realising the makeover (basically just dyeing his hair an unrealistic shade of grey) didn’t work as well as expected.
Whats people’s trick/tip/advice to stumbling through like the mole is my favourite ever game show but whenever try without subs it can never keep my attention since no clue whats going on
Most of the challenges are easy enough to figure out just by watching, and if not there’s normally explanations of the challenge without spoilers on here. You don’t lose as much of the character stuff from not understanding the language as I expected.
I’m not sure if it’s a skill or anything, but you need a decent grasp of cause and effect and motivation – sometimes you have to work backwards from partway into the challenge, X is doing Y for reason Z and because of that I now understand what persons A, B and C are doing and why – the Belgian show is pretty unique in that its edited to make this pretty clear, drawing explanatory graphics where necessary (in a way that actually would be harder for understanding Dutch Mole).
You don’t need a brilliant grasp of Flemish, but it helps to recognise certain words – numbers (if they use the word “thousand” they’re probably talking about money), things like yes/no, time, that sort of thing. That the conversations tend to be subtitled in Flemish is useful.
People yelling “fuck!” (see also “verdomme!”) has the same meaning the world over – you can work out from people’s tone and body language if something is going well or not and if people are happy or not, although I certainly accept that a proportion of viewers will find this more difficult than others.
It depends how much effort you want to put in really, sleuthing it out is part of the fun for me, although I absolutely miss the clarity and small bits of telling conversation subtitles provide.
I will watch Episode 7 and add a task list later, in the meantime there’s no point waiting.
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Go ahead.
Episode 7: THIS IS SPARTA!
Task 1: The four split into two pairs, two who think they’d make good Spartan soldiers and two who would prefer to do some shopping.
Note: I’m almost certainly missing some rules from this so please correct what I’ve got wrong.
Subteam1: The Spartan contestants must endure the Spartathlon. They have three hours to travel 17km along mountainous and rocky roads to get to the nearest town where a statue of Leonades is constructed. Along the way there will be mini-tasks. They start off with spartan sandals.
MT1: Walk the next two kilometres barefoot. Only one of them has to do this and they can swap partway through if they want. The prize for doing is is two pairs of proper walking shoes.
MT2: Carry a really heavy barrel of liquid a further two kilometres. It looks like they can stop and drink some if they want (you’d think the correct strategy would be “empty the barrels” in this case so I’ve almost certainly missed a nuance here). I *think* the prize here is that if they do it they can open the parchment, where they’re warned that precisely three hours after they began a group of armed archers will fire 40 arrows upon the shoppers, and to win the €2,000 the shoppers need to be protected at all costs.
MT3: They need to travel the last 6km without stopping. If they make it to the statue of Leonades there are two large shield which ought to help them it’s then a few hundred yards on to the oblivious shoppers, having a drink at a table.
Subteam 2: Gilles is feeling peckish so he’s asking the contestants to get 15 items from a shopping list for him whilst he hides in a car – each one worth €50-€150 for the group’s pot. However, he hasn’t got much money on him so they’ll have to shoplift – the manager is aware of the game but the rest of the staff aren’t. They’re also given a little bit of money as cover. They can go in and out as many times as they like, but as soon as they’re caught it’s game over. The first five items are worth base value. Items 6-10 worth double money, and items 11-15 is worth triple money. When the game is over, they go and sit at a table for a drink…
Task 2: Almost certainly missing something here, the contestants are challenged to eat a Greek pastry delicacy, which appears to have quite a lot of smelly cheese in it. The fastest person will get to interview each of the other three contestants with their heads poking through a hole in an otherwise sealed cardboard box. It’s the Smith and Jones remake we were all waiting for.
Task 3: This is a goodie, a game of logic and lies. The contestants take a train to their final destination. In one carriage is six differently coloured briefcases – four of them contain money (€500, 1k, 1.5k, 2k), the other two contain a Vreistelling for the final. Each person gets to look inside one and only one case and may or may not tell the others about what’s inside.
Halfway through the train journey the train makes a scheduled five minute stop. In two locations, 300m away, are two chests – one that requires a combination to unlock and the other that needs to be unscrewed. Each one has a hint in it (“A vreistellng is in the yellow or grey case”, “The €2,000 is in the red or blue case”). However obtaining this information is risky because if they’re not back on the train before the time runs out they’re out of the game.
At the final destination each contestant, in an order determined by the players, picks a briefcase. If just one person picks a Vreistelling – it’s theirs and none of the money is worth anything. If two people pick one, neither of them get it and, correct me if I’m wrong, the players who picked the money get to keep it for themselves. If all four pick money, €5,000 is added to the pot.
Ah man, poor Christian, and after so heroically sticking a margarita pizza down his shorts as well. He was definitely the star of the episode, “No English!”
I may well be getting some of the details wrong here.
So, the two things I can add – only one of the pastries had stinky cheese in it. That determined who asked questions. The other thing is the rules on the briefcase game:
Only one with exemption – they win exemption; no money
Two with exemptions – they win the value of the other two cases and the two with money cases get two pasvragen each.
Everyone picks money – they win the money; €5,000
Ah ha, that makes more sense – the graphic looked like coins and I must have missed the word.
Papa Bear actually had the jokers on him I think when they got off the train.
One other thing I noticed – I think the lowest item in the shop was 40, not 50.
Gilles clearly reveals who the mol is, at the end of the train task.
Best friends, Episode 4 is now available with English subtitles, basically go to Natalia’s Episode 2 YouTube and sort the comments by latest first to get the link 🙂
OMG yesssss as haven’t been watching without
John-
Is the link you mentioned still there? I was looking for it after reading your comment but couldn’t locate. Didn’t know if it might have been taken down or if I just missed it somewhere. Thanks.
(I haven’t read the comments above as presumably you’re up to Episode 6/7 by now!)
But DAMN this show is too good…last week going from Time Team to Release The Hounds in the space of a commercial break, this week they make mini golf and the gym the centre of drama…but nope that isn’t enough here is a neogotian game just to chuck a major spanner into the works!
I love the Dutch version but you get to know every single contestant so much more in this version meaning EVERY SINGLE elmination ends up being a ‘WTF?!’ moment…
Also I hope Natalia is OK 🙂
Good news- despite rumors they were resting the show after this season, the show will be back in 2021 (they just opened up auditions)…
was about to come mention this
It’s The Final!
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GO!
FINAL EPISODE TASKS – only two of them.
Task 1: This is actually a comedy spin on a really old-skool Mol task. Two people must spend as much money as they can within an hour, but can’t own anything at the end of it. Meanwhile, the third player is led into a hotel room with thousands and thousands of drachma bank notes spread across the floor, a table, some fans, and a red telephone. Their job is to count out EXACTLY (given the exchange rate of 340 drachma = €1) the amount of money that the other two manage to spend onto the glass table in the middle of the room. To help, there’s a camera on the ceiling for a live feed beaming to the phone of the other two, and the other two can ring up the red telephone in the hotel room.
However, if the red telephone is left to ring twice, or the conversation lasts more than ten seconds, the fans in the room start blowing. Whatsmore the telephone is bolted to a chest of drawers and is just too far to reach and hold onto all the money on the table at the same time.
If the totals match at the end of the hour, they win that value for the pot. However if they don’t match then all the money spent is taken from the group pot.
Task 2: The final challenge.
The team travel to a canal on the Corinth – one with very deep walls. In turn, one will watch a video message whilst hanging backwards over a bridge. They must shout the last four words of the message as loudly as they can as they fall so that they travel to another contestant standing on another bridge 300m away. That contestant then communicates those words – or what they thought those words were, to the third player, who must try and shoot them with a sniper rifle from a board. Rotate so all three get a go at each thing. Each correctly shot word is worth €250, but once a word is shot it’s shot so if it forms part of another person’s message that’s tough luck.
Alina’s attempts to hold the money and the phone at the same time are hilarious, I was expecting a “godverdomme” somewhere in there. Is this the first final of the Belgian revival to not have a challenge involving extra information about the Mole’s identity?
I don’t remember Vietnam showing too much of their Mole post-reveal.
Worth mentioning as well, the money in the room is exactly the equivalent of their pot at that point in time – €22,235.
So potentially if they’d managed to somehow spend more than €20k in the time limit, and Alina had counted it perfectly, they could have doubled the pot?
Yep! It obviously was never going to happen, but it was theoretically possible.
Really nice reunion show, considering the lockdown, beginning with all the eliminated contestants in the previous week returning to the interview room one at a time where it all started watching the final with Alina revealing herself through the two-way glass. The rest of it conducted by Zoom chat or whatever.
Interesting things:
* Bart was prepared to let the money clock go up indefinitely, but he reckoned they’d be a limit and was interested to find out what it was – €15,000 as it turned out, then it started counting down again. That’s when he stopped it on €10,200, so the portrayal was interesting.
* Fireworks – it turns out Bart had the red screen all along but shifted his extra five questions onto Alina which kept him in the game. This, obviously, was a bit of a giveaway for him. It looks like this is the first time someone went in on Alina as the Mole.
* Alina was a supercool Mole – loved the footage of her trying to put in as little effort as possible (whilst trying to look like she was putting loads of effort in) in the gym task and how she stuffed up the Minotaur task, amongst others.
That’s at least the 2nd time that the eventual winner would have been eliminated early if not for a twist- In the 2nd US season, the contestants mid-season were asked to vote for IIRC the least-trustworthy player, and was offered the chance to take $50K (which did not come out of the pot) and quit, which she took and thus cancelled the elimination..which saved the eventual winner, as she would have gone home that night if the other player hadn’t quit…
I wonder why they’re didn’t just do the interview room part on Zoom like the rest, sure it might not have looked as good but it was a lot of extra effort to to for not a lot of content. I don’t know exactly how the lockdown rules work in Belgium, but if it’s anything like over here they would struggle to justify “filming a reality TV show reunion, and only a small part of it” as an essential travel excuse.
I absolutely loved the ‘between 4 and 6’ hidden clue, although a bit gutted they didn’t reveal what the ‘consequence’ would have been had someone opened Pandora’s Box
Yeah, best hidden clue for ages that I think. Didn’t pick up on it without the subs.
Episodes 3-8 are available with English subs
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOOI3UyoXA7w1nUquRgtGDg
I’ve just watched the finale, they just never ever fail to disappoint with the dramatic reveal editing!
Excellent!
Is it possible to get just the subs, without the video?
Subs for ep 9 now up.
Bumpity bump obviously, but Bart joined us for a chat over the weekend and it’s releasing tomorrow.
It took me a while to get around to watching this, waiting for the English subtitled versions, but I’m glad I did. I think it may not have been their best ever season, but even this show’s less spectacular seasons are head and shoulders above other shows. As much as anything else, the fact it’s season five of the revival means that it’s less inherently novel, and the twists were much smaller than the one at the start of season four. The result of the final was especially thrilling, not least because I enjoy it when I am completely surprised by the identity of the Mole and get to look forward to seeing what I missed.
It’s not a complete categorisation., but I think there are at least four common themes running through Mole games:
1) Physically demanding
2) Uncomfortable (scary, deliberately displeasant, transgressive. or just designed to take contestants out of their comfort zone to the point where you could reasonably expect them to want not to play)
3) Funny or absurd
4) Game-y, typically with implications for the metagame of revealing the mole’s identity
…though there are often games which crossover, or at least feature elements of more than one category. For instance, the shoplifting game was both funny and yet clearly slightly deliberately uncomfortable, judging by Christian’s very reasonable reaction. Some game – and more of them in the Dutch version – don’t seem to come into any of these categories and these tend to be less interesting to watch, or at least feel less distinctively Mole-y.
I suspect this season was probably lighter than most in terms of uncomfortable games. (This is actually to my taste; I watch this show from behind my fingers from time to time, and this is the only show where I do – normally needing to do that means that I just don’t bother to watch the show.) I’m not saying that that definitely was why this wasn’t the very best season but it could be an element of it.
I think fundamentally there’s a big difference with how the Dutch and Belgians come up with challenges – the Belgians will go “what’s an interesting/entertaining/funny idea and can we loosely tie it into local mores for colour?” (I think it’s quite interesting that the credits for the challenge makers is “scenarios and challenges” or something like that, so they take a holistic view when putting these things together). The Dutch tasks these days seem to be making do with spinning out their book of 24 challenges in a slightly different order and hoping the cast can pick up the slack. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. However it wasn’t that long ago, towards the end of Art’s run as host, where we felt there was a big step up in task ideas – helped by some excellent casts. Maybe it’s a staffing thing. Maybe it’s just a budget thing – I don’t think Avro are going to be losing sleep whilst it still rates as it does. I think it’s the shame the Dutch hamstring themselves by having all tasks completed by all people without splitting the team up as The Mole has traditionally done.
Also it’s easy to forget that the Dutch show has been running 20 years plus special editions now and I’d have run out of new ideas about halfway through series one.
Belgian Mol may have peaked with series three, but given none of the five seasons thus far has dropped below an 8/10 that’s a pretty incredible achievement. It’s the attention to detail as much as anything else. It’ll be a sad year when they produce a duffer.
One massive advantage the Belgian version has, and can never duff up (unless he leaves) is Gilles De Coster who I believe as well as presenting the thing also has a lot of production input, he is so passionate about the show and it shines through on screen
No offence to Rik but he presents in a much more ‘passive’ manner, although he did improve for the second series of his, Art was well on his way but then got pinched by another TV network sadly, the 2018 series was always going to be hard to ever top I guess (Where in Kiev are you friend? The third and longest route, you will face…De Mol (quite literally in the following reveal show!) – not forgetting good old Ron!)
I’ve been writing an introduction to The Mole, intended for people who don’t like reality TV (or at least think they don’t) for quite a while now, and I have really struggled with how to explain the types of challenges this show uses, so you have helped me out without realising it, thank you!
Just got to the end of the series on very overdue catch up, and Mannikie!, This Show!
An absolutely wonderful season, I love all the stuff they did with music, droneshots, and the twisting camera motif. The attention to detail is absolutely everything and I’m astounded by the frequency with which they can produce those excruciating, brilliant, jump-out-of-my-chair moments. I was particularly impressed by: When they get to the Yurt and the box is there, Giles’ double double trick reveal of The Box, everything involving The Minotaur, Sailm and Bart and Christain going full paranoia in The Interrogation, Christian and Alina’s Shoplifting Journey and the subsequent epic volley of arrows. The gym crew groaning as each dish comes out to the restaurant diners was hilarious. The drunken pair of J&B staggering into a perfume shop, likewise. But the show is also capable of raw emotion: when Bart’s wife appears on the video over the canal. Jolien’s frustration after being outplayed in the dinner-with-the-mole game — an incredible anti-high. Alina having a breakdown over her Mum’s backseat driving — the most releatable and emotive scene I can remember.
I think Brig is right to observe that more than any show I’ve ever seen (and weirdly, I’d say the next-closest contender may well be Busted!), De Mol challenges are genius because they are motivated by these punchlines, and build everything else in backwards to make a tense and reliable path to these punchlines. What’s extra special about De Mol, is that they always manage to do this in a way that’s gameily-sound, coherent, easy-to-explain, and logistically tight.
Alina was a super mole, and for me one of the most “I have seen more than enough sincere effort from this person to rule them out from being the mole” contestants EVER. I feel, more than most moles, that she was modifying her personality and manners to play up this naive, happy-go-lucky, pure-as-springwater character, (which also made for fantastic contrast with the greasy-lawyer nature of Bart) and that’s one of the reasons why the reveal and subsequent reaction were so emotional.
Which brings me to my big observation about this series – as Chris has said, fewer scary/unpleasant games this year. And while I love that the Mol of years past has been able to bounce in-and-out of those dark places (I’ll never forget the ‘Treatment’ game in Mexico), I felt like this year we really got a great selection of games to explore moments of stress, frustration, determination and bravery, in a much more wholesome way – and that, plus a great cast, and a great subset of that cast making the final 4 and 3, made this series feel so warm, and inviting, and enjoyable. A great series, and I’m so glad it’s not the end 🙂
I moved job about a month ago. I knew that one of my new colleagues has been working from home in Belgium for a couple of months, but only now did I realise that he lives in Ghent, and Ghent is definitely Flemish Belgium. If it turns out that he’s not a fan of De Mol, and so not willing to talk about it next year, I’ll be ever so disappointed!
It’s the site of the café challenge from South Africa!