I watched a little bit of Take Me Out over the week and whilst not completely awful or anything, it did seem to lack a certain something. Substance, I think it was.
But over ten years ago ITV were doing a sort of similar thing on Saturday nights based on a popular European format of the time: Man O Man. “Girls,” the theme tune rhetorically asks, “what are we looking for?” before ending with “they don’t have to be cool they just have to be fun, a perfect body doesn’t matter just a cute little bum!” In Man O Man, a group of confident guys attempt to impress a large group of women across a number of different disciplines (talent, chat-up lines, swimming trunks, that sort of thing) in order to win a motorbike. And if they fail, Nell McAndrew pushes them into a swimming pool.
The show did alright – it only got one series but was bought back for several one-off specials over the next few years with a more modern looking set.
Of course loads of people said “yeah, but you couldn’t do it the other way round could you?” and the answer is “no, of course not, and that is because of history and gender differences which aren’t just going to go away just because it’s suddenly the 1990s.” Besides anything else, Man o Man was basically immensely silly and hence entertaining.
i’m just watching the gladiators on challenge right now, and there is a fairly familiar looking alexander reid competing!
I’m sure you could argue that ‘beauty contests are doing it the other way round,’ probably.
Proper beauty contests tend tyo put a lot more emphasis on dignity, in fairness.