Tired of Big Brother, too afraid to turn on The Apprentice now that Donald Trump is at the gates of the White House
Tired of Big Brother, too afraid to turn on The Apprentice now that Donald Trump is at the gates of the White House
Never fear. In the television future dogs will fly, people will come back from the dead and parents will choose their children’s dates.
These are just some of the new reality television concepts coming to a screen near you.
A dog called Shadow that was only hours from being put down in a pound was rescued and taught to fly a light aircraft — with the attentive aid of a co-pilot — in Dogs Might Fly that aired on Britain’s Sky TV on Sunday.
The Collie-Staffordshire Bull Terrier cross was one of three dogs trained by a team of expert handlers who had previously taught another dog to drive.
But other new formats previewed this week at MIPTV, the world’s biggest TV market in Cannes, France, have less happy endings, with people and technology pushed to new and sometimes unbearable limits.
Wimps in the Wilderness abandons a group of men with “self-esteem issues” on a desert island to see if they can “man-up” and survive long enough to build a raft on which to escape.
But the Danish show is child’s play compared to the hell visited upon 20 “elite” American men and women, including survivalists, hunters and scientists, forced to follow the wildebeest migration on foot across the East African savannah for six weeks.
Their unarmed “human herd” is pitted by Fox International in Mygrations (sic) against all the predators that lie in wait in the long grass, never mind the charging wildebeests themselves.
Dutch channel RTL4 breaks up couples in a jungle setting and forces them to compete against each other on gender lines in SOS — Survival of the Sexes.
