I missed this tweet a few days ago, I suspect many readers will be interested.

Sad tonight to hear about the passing of legendary Gladiators referee John Anderson at the age of 92. Amongst other things like training the Glads, his stewardship of the role, with his instantly recognizable booming voice and no-nonsense attitude, was a massive part in setting the tone of the original show that made it the success it was with the public.

Thanks. The Sun reporting that ITV have bought the rights to Australian format The Summit, which of course is being described as The Traitors meets SAS, because everyone in TV is lazy and not worth your time. It’s had two series in Australia where it has done mediocrely and will be launching in the US in October, in a style that my Discord correspondents suggests is a bit weird, episode 1 starting after and NFL game on September 29th and episode two on October 16th. If there’s one thing I know about endurance events it’s the value of inertia and momentum.

In it, a group of people climb a mountain carrying (according to The Sun) £500,000 between them. If people drop out that share of the money is gone, but variously there are vote outs, and that money is kept and redistributed. Getting to the top means getting a share of the money, but if they don’t get there in time they lose. Edit: I’m being told by people who watched it voted out money isn’t safe either.

Deadline for applications is 20th September, if you fancy it. This link came up quite recently on the Discord, everything except the title matches up to the information, we’re 99% confident it’s for The Summit, but under a different title to throw you off.

We quite like endurance quests so we’ll keep an open mind on this one – we’ve not watched any of the Australian original. Also thanks to ITV for giving us something to talk about in these lean times.

Don’t have a go at me, it’s not my fault there’s nothing interesting happening on linear right now. Also it’s the Summer.

This may or may not end up being all that interesting to us, it’s about social media influencing, but it’s from South Korea so obviously it looks modern and incredible on screen, and feels like a new idea. The Influencer starts August 6th.

I don’t think we discussed Spanish film The Platform on here when it came out in 2019, which asked some faintly interesting philosophical questions based around its set-up of a vertical prison where food starts at the top and works its way down leading to horrible situations. Not for the faint hearted, but worth a watch. Didn’t need a sequel, but we’re getting one anyway and it’s out on Netflix on October 4th.

Note: Trailer contains scenes of horror.