I am so excited, I am so excited. Monday night in The Netherlands on NPO3 we’re getting an actual new run of actual bloody The Genius. The best TV show being made in the world from 2013-2015.
The Genius will see 10 smart Dutch people meet up and compete in games of strategy to stay in the competition, earning Garnets (usually awarded for winning games in the most efficient way) along the way which the winner will have turned into prizemoney. Some games are games of mental agility. Some games are games of reading people and bluff. Many have an element of betrayal and double dealing.
If you’re looking for the moment the show goes from “great fun” to “something a bit special”, it’s going to be Jinho playing the Open, Pass game. Contestants have to put together their own deck of cards which when shuffled and dealt out will make an equation with as large a number as possible. It looks like a game of luck… but Starcraft celebrity Jinho realises it isn’t.
If you want to read our thoughts of the series, it started as a “this is interesting you should give it a look” post for series one and each subsequent series got its own discussion page. If you want to go back and watch it, Reddit /r/TheGenius is your friend, which I would link to directly but it looks like Reddit’s down at time of writing.
And now the Dutch are having a go and we’re extremely pleased – they were the first territory to actually buy it up (albeit years ago) and they’re also, with the possible exception of the Flemish, the territory where it’ll most likely have a decent chance.
The original Korean was an extremely stylish show with its manga-oriented titles, Idiotape electronic soundtrack, THAT opening from Moby’s Extreme Ways for its ‘checkmate’ moments and extremely slick editing featuring probably the first time a reality gameshow had used “flash forward” moments as a tease. We don’t know how much of this the Dutch are going to use – immediately there’s a certain change in feel as rather than the four rooms and central hall of the original it looks like a big warehouse with a many sided screen and the electronic garnet badges have been replaced with chalkboard ones, but I’m happy to accept that it’s just a different culture interpreting a show in a different way. We know the Dutch love their found soundtracks, so we’ll likely forgive everything the first time the Moby strings start up if they use them. And are we going to get a Dutch Sangmin hide under a table to eavesdrop at any point?
My only point of concern really is that it looks like from the trailer they’re playing Food Chain as the opening game (which they played on series two of the original) which has plenty of room for drama but is also *quite complex*, especially for an audience who may not be primed as to what the show is about – I might have done Fruit Shop (S3 opener) as it’s a bit easier to get your head around – we’ll see.
Join us in #geniuschat in the Bother’s Bar Discord where more than likely we’ll be dissecting it at length when naughty English subbed versions turn up.
FIGHTING!!!