September is very exciting for fans of Netflix’s Physical 100 ‘franchise’ (urgh), Physical 100 Italy joins on September 11th and Physical 100 Mexico on September 16th. It looks like they’ve both properly gone for the big, dramatic sets – central to Physical 100‘s appeal I think, but it looks like Italy’s challenges (from the trailer at least) are remixes of existing P100 tasks but Mexico’s look a little newer and so more interesting. Of interest is how closely it sticks to the original South Korean editing style, I’m hoping episodes are slightly shorter but we’ll see.
And now something that should have physical things in it but doesn’t, but is a really interesting find (I presume, I can’t watch it properly until I finish work tonight) – the 2000 Fox Krypton Factor pilot (presumably) hosted by Pat O’ Brien uploaded by The Game Show Vault. Didn’t make it to series, but likely of interest to Krypton Factor nerds.
Krypton Factor: I will say this: I quite like the set (Pat’s Pulpit is neat), and they’ve somehow managed to create a music bed that doesn’t get too tiresome after 45 minutes which is good going for a 15 second loop. The material felt legitimately challenging, but it’s difficult not to shake the fact that an observation round, half an hour of mental agility followed by a double dose of general knowledge is quite heavy going. O’ Brien doesn’t quite have Burns’ slightly hurried tempo in general knowedge so it doesn’t really feel like a climactic finish (and actually there were several timed events where the clock started and several seconds elapsed before he started asking anything). It’s a shame there were no physical rounds to break it up really. Doing an observation round based on commercials – and brazenly getting away with it – is peak US TV really.
Really it could have been a lot worse.