I’m a bit late to this party, but last week I was petsitting and took the time to catch up on Korea’s Bloody Game on Kocowa (other illegitimate methods are available, but support the creators yo, also I wanted to watch it on a big screen in the front room rather than on a computer monitor) – it doesn’t have the second series (in the UK at least) but it does have the first and most recent.

The first series is fun enough but underwhelming, “what if we did a 6/10 version of The Genius but had a Big Brother style rich house/poor house divide and vote-offs?” the games aren’t especially clever, the setting not that exciting (it’s a mildly nice residence called “the Bloody Mansion” – as in “of blood”), but it does set up its ideas quite nicely, you can use earned money from the challenges to buy extra votes, but that money is also potential prizemoney, and the losers don’t in fact go home, they go and live in the mansion’s secret basement Parasite style where they can spend all day folding up pizza boxes and doing extra tasks for basic living money, occasionally secretly affect the challenges going on upstairs and, the best bit, figure out how to break out and secretly go upstairs and steal the mansion’s niceities until they have a legitimate chance to get back into the game. Perhaps most interesting about the first series is that there’s a five host peanut gallery offering commentary, some of the biggest names in the survival genre game – Sangmin and Dongmin off of The Genius amongst them.

Fast forward to series three which came out last year and what we have could be considered no less than art. It contains three of The Genius‘ most iconic players – Jinho, Dongmin, Kyungran. The first five episodes serve mainly to set up the remainder of the season where it gets going properly, and some of those episodes are anything up to three hours long. There will be brilliant twists that might not pay-off until several episodes down the line. In the main the games are excellent, full of different possible strategies to win, and some of the gameplay is jaw-dropping stuff, if you only watch one episode, the episode with the 7 Notes game features several moments of outside-the-box thinking, play and counter-play, each one more entertaining than the last which I won’t spoil. The opening ten minutes of the first episode features a contestant quickly cracking a code to escape their confines, stuffing several bags with (fake) money and then thinking to set fire to the rest so nobody else can use it to buy advantages – it feels like a real step up. It’s quite a difficult show to like, it takes so much time to watch, but if you’ve got the patience and want something to watch after The Devil’s Plan you should search it out.

…the return of the French Summer games. Fort Boyard starts tomorrow night on France 2, and seeing as the “ghosts of the past” episodes were clearly the most popular of weekly variants they’ve done the last few years they’ve basically themed this entire season around it, Les Origines, Pere Fouras is back in his watchtower and they’ve reinstalled loads of old games albeit with modern twists and loads of old characters are coming back seemingly in an Apprentice-style segment where they’ll get to prove their worth in setting challenges. It’s also seemingly Olivier Minne’s last season since the shock announcement that he’s moving channels this autumn. We’ll be discussing this in #fortboyardchat in the Discord.

But also! Intervilles made a successful return to France 2 last night having been threatening to return for a number of years now, helmed by Nagui and and made by his Air Productions alongside Bruno Guillion. Nagui is apparently channelling Pere Fouras these days. It’s quite an impressive and slick live production for what is quite a large scale and chaotic show and seems to have had some money thrown at it – big party atmosphere, big travelling circus vibe. A couple of interesting new features, as having a live bull threatening to run into contestants is frowned upon these days, each team has a time bank of three minutes for the show where they can deploy their own person dressed as Topo the cow to come on and cause extra disruption to the other team which is a really fun idea that didn’t quite translate into practice last night I don’t think. Another fun idea that didn’t quite work in practice was combining the traditional quiz and tug of war elements into one event – the hosts would ask questions to individuals in turn whilst they were tugging and if they got it wrong they had to leave, over a bit quick, would have been over even quicker when the teams were unbalanced I’d have thought. Also there’s a live viewer competition, you phone up and pick a team to back, one person who backed each team gets phoned back and asked an estimated guess question (“how many steps on the pedometer have the two coaches made since the start of the show?”), nearest guess won a cruise and an extra point for their supported team for the Champions Wall, which as ever feels like a lot of effort throughout the show for not much reward for an all-or-nothing endgame.

That last large paragraph makes it sound like a bit of a mess so to be clear by and large I thought it was a loud, confident and largely successful modern reimagining of the show – I even quite like the new theme tune, presumably they’ve taken the ‘Shananas’ and done it in house to save on licensing, I don’t know – although doubtless there’s a lot of first episode intrigue and its number probably won’t hold across the next month, the final’s on July 24th, we’ll have to see. I think it’s a more successful version of it than the rather soulless Biggest Gameshow In The World incarnation previously.

Netflix are at it again! If you want to travel to Dagenham on the 14th July they’re filming What’s In The Box? with Neil Patrick Harris, tickets via Applause Store. It is described thusly:

Would you like to join us LIVE in the studio for this edge-of-your-seat guessing game where every decision could lead to life-changing rewards? You’re in luck, because Netflix’s newest game show checks all those boxes and more, and YOU are invited!

In What’s in the Box, giant boxes conceal astonishing prizes, wild surprises, and unexpected reveals, and Emmy- and Tony-winning performer will host Neil Patrick Harris leads pairs of contestants through rounds of fast-paced trivia as they race to guess what’s inside each box. But unpacking the prize is only the beginning. As the high-stakes game unfolds, competitors’ smarts, strategy, and stamina will be really tested to the limit. 

Shifting alliances and unexpected twists mean only those with sharp instincts — and a little luck — will hold onto their winnings and claim victory!

It sounds basically like Quizzy White Elephant, something I don’t think we’ve seen since Howie Mandel’s Take It All a few years ago, which is not in itself a bad idea. Whether this will escape the Streaming Shiny Floor Curse will remain to be seen. It’s being made by Rollercoaster, also responsible for the recent You Bet! revival, so you probably won’t be able to follow it very well but you will get to look at people’s shocked faces every few seconds.

Neil Patrick Harris is no stranger to boxes, famously hosting a US pilot for The Cube, and more recently board game puzzle adventure things Box One and Box Two.

This week’s other “excitement”, if you can call it that, is House of Streams on Netflix on Wednesday, a reality competition to find the? a? successful influencer which almost certainly won’t be as good as Netflix’s own Korean version of the idea, The Influencer. I would do a Show Discussion post for it, but I don’t think it’s likely to attract much comment.

Shall we have a look at how DestyX (Destination X) is doing in the US? Mediocrely! Live numbers it appears to be on the slide, coming out of America’s Got Talent which seems to be increasing week on week, it’s done 2.1m 0.3/4 demo, 2.1m 0.3/5, 1.8m 0.2/3 thus far, the sneak ep 1 preview currently doing the best numbers 2.5m 0.4/6, although they’ve put out a release which suggests it’s actually doing very well actually, premiere numbers doubling after a fortnight which might be fair enough, we’ll see.

In other news, whilst we wait for the new series of Fort Boyard to start in July (it’s apparently subtitled “The Origins”, which unfortunately doesn’t mean a return to about 60-ish minute episodes and live tigers, but does involve Pere Fouras relocating back up the watchtower – poor Passe-Muraille, so many stairs) you can buy FB apparel from the official Boutique, I’m quite tempted by a beach towel but they are €70. The same company do a lot of official TV merch, so why not buy a La Carte Aux Tresors snow globe whilst you’re there.