A Conundrum

Somehow I doubt that there’s a simple explanation, or indeed a single answer to this question but I’m going to ask it anyway. Why is it that some shows explode from the country of their birth to go on to be a success across different parts of the world while some only remain a home grown smash, and others find great success yet still have a few countries in which they flop.

I’ll tell you what prompts me to ask. The BBC have just put a couple of series of Australian Survivor onto the iplayer. I’m a Survivor fan from way back., and used to watch Australian Survivor on Netflix. And I’ve never quite been sure about why it never caught on in the UK, not in the original 2 UK series on ITV nor on the BBC revival a couple of years ago.

We can look at the things which can blight a homegrown version of a hit. If we start with the host, I don’t think Mark Austin was the right choice for the original couple of series on ITV. Too straight down the line and serious – it really called for someone with at least a foot in the world of Entertainment. Had you asked me beforehand whether I thought Joel Dommett would have been the right choice for the BBC revival I would have said absolutely not. But then he turned the dial on the godawful cheese that he dishes out on The Masked Singer (enjoy the show but not him on it) so much so that he was almost channelling the host of Australian Survivor, which was pretty much exactly what the show needed. Yet it never caught on and has not been back since.

Looking at the ingredients, it’s difficult to see which of them might put off a British audience. There’s been enough popular shows in the last two or three decades that have relied on contestants showing sneakiness and nastiness to each other that it surely can’t be that. There’s nothing on the show that is quite as gross as a lot of the bushtucker trials in the hardy perennial I’m A Celebrity. As for the physical trials, well, in some ways they are every bit as exciting and impressive as anything you’ll see in Gladiators. But for all of that it just doesn’t seem to catch on here. Strange.