{"id":15136,"date":"2025-07-23T19:44:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T18:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/?p=15136"},"modified":"2025-08-04T21:33:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T20:33:23","slug":"its-the-reality-tv-battle-of-the-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/?p=15136","title":{"rendered":"It’s the Reality TV Battle OF THE SUMMER"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the red corner! Worldwide not-sensation Destination X<\/strong> starting next Wednesday (30th) and Thursday at 9pm and going out every Wednesday and Thursday thereafter. Claimed by lazy writers to be a cross between Race Across the World<\/strong> (i.e. they’re on a bus) and The Traitors<\/strong> (i.e. people get eliminated?) this was a big co-commission for the BBC – \u00a320m was a number being bandied about, although how much NBC (not a massive flop to be fair, but not much to shout about either) contributed to that I don’t know. I don’t think it will be shit, and Rob Brydon is the mystery ingredient that widens the possibility space, but we watched a number of episodes of the original<\/a> and just didn’t find it that interesting, the hook the show sold itself on (is the clue real or fake?) fades into a pretty standard challenge show background and ultimately the mystery just wasn’t that compelling, although we’d watch a Making Of definitely. However they will have had some time to make format adjustments, but have they done enough? It’s not been a hit anywhere outside Flanders really. The first week is also up against the final week of a resurgent Love Island<\/strong> which yes is watched largely in catch-up, but it’s still good for about a million in overnight it will be priority for. My base case is that it starts well and then drops, in line with everywhere else. Also TwoFour were responsible for Loaded in Paradise<\/strong><\/a> on ITVX which was actually good fun even if nobody watched it, so it’s not like they can’t pull off this sort of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in the blue corner and starting a week later (6th August) and also going out at 9pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays Stephen Mangan is back with the second series of The Fortune Hotel<\/strong>, the first series of which I ended up enjoying<\/a> even if I went into it not really wanting to, selling tiself as ‘a bit like The Traitors<\/em>‘ but it isn’t really. I’m hoping that the contestants are a bit more strategically minded this time around, there’s a surprising amount of possible tactics considering the soul of the game is “find the case” of which last year’s lot did not think about using, but the first run definitely felt like a show that had potential. So much so Netflix ripped off its endgame for Million Dollar Secret<\/strong> with Peter Serafinowicz, which must have been galling. The first series was not a massive hit in the overnights but apparently did well on ITVX and with demos, at least they’ve waited to avoid a Love Island<\/em> clash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The overnights will be fun – I think with the amount the BBC have pushed Desty X<\/em> if the first episode starts with a 3, 2, or a 1 corresponds to a success, fine, a sucking in breath through your teeth scenario, ITV will probably be mildly less bothered about The Fortune Hotel<\/em>, or at least the likelihood of it opening to a 1.Xm number is built in. Really<\/em> interesting will be the Thursday night retentions. Of course these numbers are good gossip, until the +7s and the demos come in we won’t have an idea of how happy people truly are. Putting these shows out in August feels like A Choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other news Gladiators<\/strong> started filming today and will be filming seemingly though to the 5th August (schedule looks like 23rd-27th Heats, 29th Celebs, 30th-1st Quarters, both Semis on the 3rd and the Final on the 5th) so we ought to get leaks about new stuff in due course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the red corner! Worldwide not-sensation Destination X starting next Wednesday (30th) and Thursday at 9pm and going out every Wednesday and Thursday thereafter. Claimed by lazy writers to be a cross between Race Across the World (i.e. they’re on a bus) and The Traitors (i.e. people get eliminated?) this was a big co-commission for\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pLcmt-3W8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}