A new trend is emerging in the unscripted world—still relatively undeveloped, but with significant potential. It is that of ‘Educational Formats,’ whose titles blend entertainment with informative elements. When executed well, the learning aspect doesn’t weigh the format down; instead, it enriches it, making it a perfect fit for public broadcasters and beyond.

A case in point is History Hunters, a game show created by Heartland TV and distributed by Primitives, which debuted to great success on the Danish public broadcaster DR1 in November of last year and has already been recommissioned for a second season (we wrote about it here).

And now, on September 1st at 8:30 PM, another public network—this time Dutch (NPO2)—will host the debut of De Meester Gids (‘The Master Guide’), produced and distributed by Mediawan Skyhigh.

In this format, six celebrities take on the challenge and compete to guide groups of museum visitors around the museum’s showpieces as museum guides. All six celebrities are talented storytellers and have a (basic) interest in art and history. But they are not experts. And some of them rarely visit museums. They will all have to immerse themselves in the museum pieces.

Which of these celebrities is the most knowledgeable museum guide and best able to enthusiastically and expertly tell and inform their museum guests about the museum pieces they show the group? And who can best present the stories behind the museum pieces in an appealing way?

Each episode focuses on a different well-known museum. It could be an art museum or a historical museum. We visit six museums in six episodes. Every week, the celebrities are assigned a group of 10 museum guests to whom they give a guided tour. Each celebrity is assigned a different part of the museum for the tour with the group. The groups do not know in advance who their guides will be, and the celebrities do not know in advance what kind of group they will be dealing with this time.

The celebrities are judged by the group of visitors and by a jury. At the end of every episode, one celebrity has to leave the competition. The final will take place in the famous Van Gogh Museum. Which celebrity is the best museum guide and wins the title ‘Master Guide’?

In a period of great fragmentation and transformation, traditional networks — especially public ones, but not exclusively — must rethink their role in order not to lose their relevance and their audience. Educational Formats can certainly be one of the (many) paths to follow….

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VIRGIN DANISH

Another key strategy that linear broadcasters are deploying to counter digital fragmentation is betting heavily on bold, “talk-about” IP that drives organic conversation.

At the heart of this movement is Love Beyond Boundaries, a defining trend highlighted in our 10+1 Global Format Trends in 2025 report (request a free copy in the comments). Rather than leaning on conventional dating tropes, these “Dating Shows 2.0” unpack intimacy, vulnerability, and modern relationships without filters and in a somewhat provocative way.

Leading this charge is Virgin Island, originally produced by Double Act for Channel 4 and distributed internationally by Passion Distribution. The format delivered the biggest streaming launch in Channel 4’s history across all genres, dominating the 16–34 demographic and solidifying its track record with a strong second run in May 2026.

While the format has already expanded into the Netherlands via public broadcaster BNNVARA (produced by Concept Street) and Germany via RTL+ (produced by RTL Studios), the headline development is its brand-new Scandinavian adaptation. Denmark’s commercial public broadcaster TV 2 has officially commissioned a local version, with Nordisk Film TV (Banijay Entertainment) handling production.

Filmed at a luxury retreat in Greece, the Danish adaptation puts the format’s psychological depth directly in the spotlight. Twelve young adults struggling with intimacy anxiety will undergo an intensive, tailored therapeutic journey led by top sexologists and relationship coaches. Against the backdrop of an increasingly hypersexualized media landscape, the global age of sexual debut continues to climb—driven by ubiquitous online pornography, social isolation, and heightened body anxiety.

Through a structured mix of individual sessions, group dynamics, and hands-on somatic therapy, the Danish cast will tackle the roots of their inhibitions in a secure, supportive setting.

Ultimately, Virgin Island succeeds through a finely calculated balance between a provocative hook and genuine therapeutic substance. It is precisely this hybrid dynamic that makes the format compelling for both commercial platforms chasing social buzz and public broadcasters looking to fulfill a credible, youth-focused remit.

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MEXICAN ATHLETES

The final strategy we will analyze in this issue is the alliance/partnership between free-to-air networks (often public service broadcasters) and major global streamers. It is a peculiar alliance, considering these platforms were originally created as direct alternatives to linear television. However, the changing landscape—with YouTube genuinely upending the market—is turning former fierce competitors into allies.

Take Disney+, which has recently formed partnerships with: Rai in Italy (Day-After & Library Hub: programs and shows arrive on Disney+ the day after airing on Rai 2, along with a dedicated catalog for flagship drama series); RTVE in Spain (Linear First + Fast Second Window: free-to-air broadcast on La 1 first, arriving on Disney+ 24 hours later); ITV/ITVX in the UK (Reciprocal Content Sharing: a rotating exchange of 70–100 hours of curated titles with advertising); and ZDF in Germany (Volume Library Licensing: over 3,000 hours of permanently integrated TV series and documentaries).

The latest news comes from Mexican media giant TV Azteca and its hit competition show Exatlón México (or simply Exatlón), based on the Turkish Exathlon franchise produced by Acun Medya, which originally debuted in 2017 on Azteca 7.

The season premiere of the show’s 10th edition aired on August 24. This new season brings together iconic franchise figures with a new generation of high-performance athletes. Divided into two teams, they will face various obstacle courses as well as physical and mental challenges before moving to an individual phase. In the end, one man and one woman will be crowned champions.

The major development, however, is the agreement with Disney+. Unlike the European models that favor a day-after window, the partnership for Exatlón México features a simultaneous broadcast (simulcast). Episodes premiere at the same time on free-to-air linear TV (Azteca Uno) and via live/on-demand streaming on Disney+.

Neither party holds an early broadcast window: distribution is joint, allowing TV Azteca to protect linear viewership and traditional broadcast advertising, while Disney+ capitalizes on mobile and streaming audiences.

The agreement also includes the arrival on Disney+ of classic telenovelas and drama series produced by TV Azteca (Mirada de mujer, Cuando seas mía, Doctora Lucía) to strengthen its local content library.

In this era of profound transformation, the rules of the game are being rewritten, and only those who adapt faster and better than the rest will survive.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Primitives, the Belgium-headquartered specialist TV formats distributor, has licensed a second season of travel-entertainment quiz format On the Right Track to Slovak public broadcaster STVR. The format, which has been keeping Swedish viewers glued to their TVs every Friday night since 1987, challenges two teams of celebrities to identify destinations based on a series of clues revealed during journeys filmed from the front of a train, car or bus.

• Soon-to-launch French national TV channel Novo 19, owned by newspaper Ouest-France, has commissioned a local adaptation of Belgian format Radio Gaga.

  Novo 19 will launch as a general-interest DTT channel on September 1. Originally produced in Belgium by De Chinezen for VRT’s Canvas channel, Radio Gaga, distributed internationally by Lineup Industries, sees two hosts travel through the country in a mobile radio studio, stopping to set up camp in various small communities. They then spend the next 48 hours running a hyperlocal radio station for the residents – taking everything from song requests to confessions – with the locals acting as the central focus.

• ProSiebenSat.1 Media’s Sat.1 is bringing Deal or No Deal back to German TV screens with Banijay Productions Germany, marking the latest revival of the classic gameshow format. Production on the reboot will begin in Cologne from September 14 and the show is due to air next year. Deal or No Deal previously aired on Sat.1 between 2004 and 2008 before being briefly brought back in 2014.

• Spanish group Atresmedia will adapt Nation’s Dumbest in Spain, the hit BBC Studios game show. The Spanish version will be produced by Atresmedia in collaboration with Brutal Media, a BBC Studios company. In each episode, a group of celebrities faces a series of entertaining challenges testing logic, mental agility, and physical skill. Everyone competes with the single goal of avoiding the grand final and not being crowned “the worst.”

• Comedian Hannah Berner is set to host Making Love, an upcoming reality dating series for Paramount+. The project marks the platform's first original unscripted commission following Skydance's acquisition of the studio. While specific format details remain under wraps, Paramount+ has described the production as a relationship experiment aimed at offering singles a distinct approach to dating. The move aligns with the streamer's ongoing efforts to expand its unscripted roster with established comedic talent.

• The Brazilian producer Boninho will be in charge of adapting the South Korean dating reality show EXchange by CJ ENM for Brazil, produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Formata. The reality show will arrive on Prime Video as an original production under the title Oi, Sumido! and filming will begin in September in São Paulo and Campos do Jordão. The original Korean version of EXchange brings former couples together under one roof, initially unaware of who each participant’s ex-partner was. As they live together and meet new people, they must decide whether to rekindle a past relationship or start a new one.

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BOARDGAMES & NOSTALGIA

“Nostalgia shows" have been one of the biggest trends over the past year (missed our 10+1 Global Format Trends in 2025 report? Just drop a comment to get your free copy!), and they continue to dominate the market. In particular, turning childhood playground games (like hide-and-seek) and classic board games (like Monopoly or Battleship) into TV formats has become one of the hottest sub-genres right now

Within this space, Trivial Pursuit—the iconic trivia game created in Canada in 1979—holds a unique position. A new television adaptation (following an earlier version from 1993) was developed by Talpa Studios and Hasbro Entertainment and premiered on the American network The CW in 2024.

Following its successful performance, a Spanish version was produced for the public broadcaster RTVE in March 2026. Trivial Pursuit landed on La 2 as a daily program, following an initial launch marked by several strategic shifts. Originally conceived for afternoon slots on La 1, the game show ultimately debuted in February during Friday prime time on the main network before transitioning to La 2, where it has managed to stabilize its performance.

The experiment proved successful, and a second season has now been announced for La 2. It will retain the same mechanics and host (Basque presenter Egoitz Txurruka, known as “Txurru”). The production house, however, has changed: while the first edition was produced by Satisfaction Iberia, the label has since ceased operations in Spain and has been replaced by Stratos Studios.

In the show, Trivial Pursuit pits contestants against each other on a giant board where they must answer questions across six categories to collect the traditional wedges and reach the center before their rivals. The winner of each episode advances to a final round to compete for the show’s jackpot.

If you would like to learn more about the rules of the game, click here.

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INCLINATION & HUMOR

RTVE's second format is also part of a trend already noted in the report—that of “Funny Games”—which, unlike the previous one, has a very long tradition behind it, but has tremendously increased in importance and spread in the very last few years

The comedy game show Me Resbala is a perfect example. It is the Spanish adaptation of the French format Vendredi tout est permis avec Arthur (‘Friday Everything Is Permitted with Arthur’, though internationally known as Anything Goes), which premiered on France’s TF1 in 2011. Since its debut, the show has enjoyed enduring success, spanning 15 seasons globally. To date, the format has been adapted in 32 territories, including Italy, Portugal, Australia, Mexico, and Canada.

The history of the Spanish version is complex, as it has transitioned through the country’s three major media groups. It aired on Antena 3 from 2013 to 2021, hosted by Arturo Valls. In 2023, following Mediaset España’s acquisition of the program, it moved to Telecinco with Lara Álvarez as host. In 2026, it was announced that La 1 would revive the show, with actress and comedian Yolanda Ramos set to host the new edition, which is currently in production by Shine Iberia (part of the Banijay group) and is expected to premiere in early 2027.

Despite its undeniable international success, the show actually relies on very few rigid “formatized” elements. Its structure depends almost entirely on the performance skills of its seven comedians—eight in the early seasons—who compete in various improvised acting challenges that change regularly.

The only iconic visual element is the “Slanted Theater” (Teatro de pendiente). Contestants must perform on a stage with a 22.5-degree incline, where any slip causes them to slide and fall, all while pretending that everything is normal. In the third season, the stage was modified to tilt, allowing it to rotate from side to side and significantly increasing the difficulty of the challenge.

If a participant (including the host) cheats, it usually prompts a playful reprimand from the audience, the host, or the other contestants. At the end of the show, a randomly chosen audience member decides which comedian was the funniest of the night. The winner receives the show’s traditional prize: the Manhole Cover (la Tapa de Alcantarilla).

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make a format... though sometimes, perhaps, just a little too little.

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MURDER & DECEPTION

The third format—from commercial broadcaster Atresmedia—firmly aligns with another trend from our annual report: “Psycho-formats.” Following the global wave sparked by The Traitors, these shows revolve around a central psychological dynamic, whether it involves exposing saboteurs within a team, discovering who holds the power or the money, identifying the liar, or, as in this case, unmasking a celebrity murderer.

The title in question is Una Fiesta de Muerte (A Party to Die For), the Spanish adaptation produced by Atresmedia in collaboration with ITV Studios Iberia. Currently preparing its second special on flagship network Antena 3, the format enjoyed a solid debut on April 25, capturing a 12.8% market share (1.27 million average viewers) and reaching over 3.3 million unique viewers (with international availability on atresplayer Internacional).

The upcoming episode, titled Una fiesta de muerte: Asesinato en Canfranc (Murder in Canfranc), moves the dynamic to the historic Canfranc railway station in the Aragonese Pyrenees. Hosted by Àngel Llàcer, the installment gathers seven celebrities in a classic whodunit setup: one guest is “murdered,” while the remaining six must investigate clues and solve challenges to uncover the VIP killer.

Co-created by ITV Studios Netherlands and Talpa Studios, and distributed internationally by ITV Studios, the format originated in the Netherlands on SBS6 under the title Moordfeest and has also been adapted in France on M6 as Murder Party au Musée. The concept blends traditional game-show mechanics with a murder-mystery narrative. Each 90-minute episode is fully self-contained, featuring a brand-new setting, theme, celebrity lineup, and culprit.

A standout element of the production is its live second-screen interactivity. By scanning an on-screen QR code, viewers at home can participate in real time, unlocking clues and submitting guesses to compete for a €3,000 cash prize. The Spanish premiere proved the strength of this feature, drawing nearly 29,000 concurrent users on the app and peaking at 1,150 responses per second during the final accusation phase.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Primitives, the Belgium-headquartered specialist TV formats distributor, has acquired the worldwide format rights to Terrain: Battle of the Flags, an adventure-reality competition inspired by gaming mechanics from German public broadcaster ZDF and award-winning Belgian production company Roses Are Blue. Created by German comedian, actor, writer and YouTube creator Torge Oelrich — better known to his millions of subscribers and followers as Freshtorge — Terrain: Battle of the Flags re-imagines the experience of competitive gaming in the real world.

• Finnish channel MTV announced on Monday, August 3rd, that Big Brother Suomi is returning to television this autumn, produced by Banijay Finland after a four-year hiatus. Having launched in Finland in 2005, the show aired on MTV's Sub from 2005 to 2014, before moving to Nelonen from 2019 to 2022.

• NBC will extend its popular singing competition The Voice with a new celebrity-based spinoff, which has just launched production ahead of a planned premiere in 2027. The Voice: Celebrity trades undiscovered talent for a range of celebrities, including actors, musicians, influencers, athletes, comedians and reality TV stars, all competing to become the first celebrity Voice champion. The stars participating will be revealed at a later date.

• Endemol Shine Brasil will produce the fourth season of Pedreiro Top Brasil, the branded entertainment reality show created by Quartzolit, the construction materials brand of the Saint-Gobain group. The new season will air starting in October on national free-to-air TV via Band, and will also be available on Quartzolit’s YouTube channel. Launched by the Quartzolit brand in 2023, Pedreiro Top Brasil pits professionals against each other in challenges carried out on actual construction sites.

• Banijay Entertainment has also announced a new European adaptation of its hit home renovation format, Love It or List It. This time, Endemol Shine Poland will produce the first Polish version of the show, titled Pokochaj Lub Sprzedaj (litterally: ‘Love it or sell it’) for the Super Polsat channel. Originally created by Big Coat Media and distributed by Banijay Rights, Love It or List It — which spans over 60 versions across various territories — follows homeowners who must decide whether to renovate their current home or move to a new one, guided by an interior designer and a real estate agent competing to win them over.

• Mexican network TV Azteca has partnered with Sony Pictures Television for a new local adaptation of the hit game show ¿Quién Quiere Ser Millonario?. The show will premiere on Azteca Uno on Sunday, September 27, marking the format’s return to Mexico after TV Azteca previously aired two seasons between 2010 and 2012. The new version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? will be hosted by Enrique de la Madrid, a former Mexican Secretary of Tourism and former federal deputy, who will be stepping into the role of an entertainment show host for the very first time.

• Sunday, August 16th, marked the highly anticipated debut of Fiebre de Canto, Chilevisión’s new prime-time show. The premiere brought 20 celebrities to the stage who, starting this week, must showcase their talent and vocal evolution in front of a panel of judges.

• Amazon’s Prime Video has ordered a US version of unscripted comedy format LOL: Last One Laughing, to be produced by Fulwell Entertainment. The format, which has been a huge success for Prime Video in different markets around the world, challenges comedians to spend the day together without so much as cracking a smile.

• Prime Video UK has slated the first three episodes of its Halloween-themed Last One Laughing spin-off—titled Last One Laughing: Halloween and hosted by Jimmy Carr and Roisin Conaty—for an October 23 premiere. The final episode will be available on October 30. Both Last One Laughing (which will return for a third season in 2027) and its Halloween special hail from Banijay UK labels Zeppotron and Initial.

• Netflix has commissioned Will You Marry Me?, a live unscripted series out of the UK in which one man tasks the global streamer’s members with deciding whom he will ask to marry him. Produced by Banijay UK labels Workerbee and Initial, the show will launch globally on Netflix in 2027 and roll out across four weeks.

  It follows a single man living in a custom-built house alongside a group of single women. The contestant hands over total control to Netflix viewers to help him find true love, with every major decision and dramatic exit voted on by the streamer’s members, culminating in a live, televised proposal.

• Netflix has also commissioned a Canadian version of its dating reality format Love is Blind. The local adaptation is being produced by Toronto-based Insight Productions, with the streamer on Tuesday announcing that casting had opened.

  The original American version, created by Kinetic Content boss Chris Coelen, is among Netflix’s most-watched unscripted shows and has been remade in more than a dozen markets, including the UK, Japan, Brazil, Germany and Sweden.

• Netflix is teaming with L.A.-headquartered The Intellectual Property Corporation (IPC) on the new weight loss-focused dating format, Weight to Date. The new series, which doesn’t yet have a release date and is currently casting, will follow singles during and after extreme weight loss as they navigate the dating world.

• Disney+ and Hulu have unveiled a deal with iHeartMedia to stream video versions of six podcast titles. Among them is Hey Jonas!—billed as the official Jonas Brothers podcast hosted by Kevin, Nick, and Joe Jonas —which streams on both platforms following its May 18 debut. The lineup also includes Pod Meets World, in which Boy Meets World stars Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle, and Rider Strong reflect on their 30-year friendship through shared 90s memories, random tangents, and guest conversations.

Last Thursday, July 23, French public broadcaster France 2 launched its new game show Qui ment ? (Who is Lying?), produced by Flanagan Production (part of Studio TF1). It is certainly an intriguing cross-market move to see a flagship public channel airing a show from the production arm of its primary commercial rival (France Télévisions vs. TF1). However, France appears to be gradually adopting the UK model, where cross-commissioning between public broadcaster BBC and commercial network ITV is standard practice. A prime example is ITV’s smash hit The 1% Club, which is produced by the independent indie Magnum Media and distributed globally by BBC Studios.

But back to Qui Ment?. As the title suggests, the game show fits squarely into the Psycho Formats trend—one of the key movements highlighted in our annual 10+1 Global Format Trends report. These are formats with a psychological twist, where players must identify traitors or saboteurs, figure out who holds the money or power, or, as in this case, spot the liar—albeit here with a lighthearted, comedic spin.

Two pairs of non-celebrity contestants compete in the studio on general knowledge questions. Helping—and hindering—them is a panel of six celebrities (the debut episode featured Bruno Solo, Gil Alma, Lola Dubini, Max Boublil, Anne Roumanoff, and Florent Peyre).

For each question, the celebrities jump in with their own explanations or answers. However, while some VIPs know the correct answer and tell the truth, others are tasked with deliberately lying, using their best acting skills to deliver completely believable fabrications. Contestants must analyze their answers, hesitations, posture, and body language to call their bluff and bank points. The pair that survives the preliminary rounds moves on to the finale for a chance to win up to €50,000.

To be fair, it’s not a particularly groundbreaking twist: quiz shows featuring bluffing or lying contestants are a fairly well-trodden concept. TF1 itself recently aired Tricheurs (Cheaters) on TFX and TF1+—a quiz created by TF1’s development team alongside Dreamspark and Ah! Production (see here)—which feels very much like a “big brother” to Qui Ment?. (The latter, incidentally, had a muted debut, drawing 1.095 million viewers and an 8.6% market share).

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UK SAND

Talent shows have nearly eighty years of distinguished television history under their belt. The first one was the American show Doorway to Fame, broadcast in 1947 by the DuMont Television Network—one of America’s pioneer commercial television networks, which ceased operations in 1956.

Initially confined solely to artistic disciplines like singing and dancing, talent formats later expanded into cooking and various sports, eventually embracing a massive range of artistic, athletic, and professional fields. Over the years, there have been talent shows dedicated to puppeteers and marionettes (Tique Het), window dressers (Window Warriors), snipers (Sniper: The Ultimate Challenge), carpenters (Good with Wood), blacksmiths (Forged in Fire), computer programmers (C0d3rs Championship), ceramic artists (The Great Pottery Throw Down), glassblowers (Blown Away), and many others.

And a few years ago, another unique category was added to this long list: sand sculptors.

Race Against the Tide is an original and striking format created by Blue Ant Studios, originally produced for CBC in Canada, where it aired for four seasons from 2021 to 2024. The premise features competitors racing against the clock to build elaborate sand sculptures in the Bay of Fundy before the tide comes in and washes them away. Because this magnificent bay boasts the highest tidal range in the world, the climax of each round is intensely dramatic and visually spectacular.

Six teams of two world-class sand sculptors compete in a head-to-head tournament, digging, pounding, carving, and shaping their way through four qualifying rounds. Each episode features a distinct theme—often highly imaginative (such as Fossil Mania, Heroes & Villains, Optical Illusion, In a Galaxy Far Away, The Wild Side, Dawn of Time, Fantasy Land, Architecture of the Future, Big Headed, and Fright Night).

The creations are evaluated by two judges who determine the winning team just moments before the incoming tide obliterates the artwork. The top two teams then face off in a high-stakes semi-final, leading to a grand finale where only one team claims the $10,000 grand prize and the crown of Race Against the Tide champion.

Surprisingly, a format this wonderful and visually arresting has taken time to secure local adaptations. That gap is finally being plugged by the BBC, which is premiering a six-part UK competition series in August across BBC Scotland, BBC Two, and iPlayer. Set on West Sands Beach in St Andrews, the adaptation is produced by Tern Television, a company owned by Zinc Media.

Long live the sand sculptors! (See the spectacular trailer of the last Canadian season: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.7160858)

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GERMAN BUSINESS

And finally, an original format - meaning it's not a localized adaptation - from Germany: Die Millionenidee (The Million Dollar Idea), created by Endemol Shine Germany, is set to premiere soon on Sat.1 and Joyn.

Hosted by prominent entrepreneur Ralf Dümmel, this unscripted business show offers everyday innovators the unique opportunity to transform raw product concepts into retail-ready market offerings.

The journey begins with an open call welcoming everyday inventors, hobbyists, and backyard creators from all walks of life. Applicants can enter the pipeline with anything from a rough sketch on a napkin or an early working prototype to a fully realized invention, pitching directly to Dümmel and a rotating panel of industry experts.

Unlike standard pitching formats where the interaction concludes with a capital investment, Die Millionenidee focuses heavily on product development and industrial execution. Together with Dümmel and his production ecosystem, successful participants take the idea all the way to the retail shelf. This hands-on process includes refining consumer concepts, overcoming complex manufacturing hurdles, establishing robust branding frameworks, and executing scaled production and retail distribution strategies.

Dümmel identifies the propositions with the highest commercial ceiling and invests in them directly, with successful ventures sharing a 50% split of the generated profits.

It has to be said that these business shows all share a certain family resemblance, essentially acting as contemporary offshoots the classic hit Shark Tank / Dragon’s Den. On the other hand, Endemol Shine Germany is well-acquainted with the genre, having spearheaded the local adaptation of Shark Tank itself. Furthermore, in 2016 Dümmel became one of the core investors on the German TV channel VOX’s start-up show Die Höhle der Löwen, a platform through which he has successfully invested in over 85 start-ups and backed more than 150 founders to date.

But, as they say, business is business…

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Independent international distribution company Lineup Industries is taking its gameshow format SWITCH to Latin America for the first time following a commission from SBT in Brazil where the show will be produced inhouse. SWITCH will air inside the container show Domingo Legal with a prize per episode of up to R$ 50.000,00. SWITCH is based on a format developed by Panenka for VRT in Belgium and distributed globally by Lineup Industries.

• Factual entertainment thriller, Celebrity Hunted, returns to Channel 4, in aid of Stand Up To Cancer, with a star-studded line-up of celebrity fugitives. Produced by Shine TV (part of Banijay UK), the celebrity fugitives are set to go on the run in early August.

• Telefuturo, the leading audience channel in Paraguay, has given the green light to the first local adaptation of Gran Hermano, which is scheduled to premiere in 2027. Described as a “historic announcement” that “will mark a before and after in the country’s television,” the first Paraguayan ‘Big Brother’ was the main novelty presented during the broadcaster’s 2026-2027 Upfront.

• Apple TV is broadening its commissioning remit by greenlighting The Last Person on Earth, its first ever original dating documentary series. Fronted by couples’ therapist Esther Perel, the show brings together singles who appear to be polar opposites and sends them on an adventure to a romantic and remote destination. The series aims to ask the question: could the last person on earth you think you’d ever want to date end up being the one person you can’t live without?

And that's all for now, folks! FRIDAY's ESPRESSO is taking a little summer break. We'll be back in just a few weeks!

The key role of YouTube in the new media landscape is now indisputable and clear to anyone working professionally in the industry. Even “traditional” broadcast networks have acknowledged this and started using it to their advantage, uploading thousands of hours of their content to Google’s platform—in many cases, specifically designed for this destination.

What is somewhat less obvious, however, is the convergence between YouTube and what is considered, rightly or wrongly, its main competitor: Netflix. Yet, examples of this trend are multiplying, proving that this kind of partnership is becoming less tactical and increasingly strategic.

In recent months, Netflix has aggressively secured deals with top YouTube creators in an effort to boost its library with this type of content alongside its flagship originals. Netflix’s new guideline is clear: acquire the (often non-exclusive) rights to the libraries of the world’s biggest YouTubers and launch their shows simultaneously (day-and-date) with Google’s platform.

Here are some of the deals Netflix has recently signed:

• Deal with the “King of Shorts” Alan Chikin Chow (known for his ultra-popular vertical comedy sketches) and with the network of podcaster/creator Jay Shetty, integrating lifestyle content, short-form formats, and personal growth interviews into the platform.

• Deal with the Stokes Twins (Alex and Alan Stokes), who have over 140 million subscribers on their channel. The entire archive of their most-viewed challenge and stunt videos landed on Netflix on July 18, 2026. In addition, the twins will develop and star in a new, long-form original series debuting on the platform in 2027.

• Deal with Mythical studio, led by YouTube creators Rhett & Link, to bring three of their YouTube shows—for now—Good Mythical Morning, Mythical Kitchen, and Last Meals—to the streaming platform.

• Deal with YouTube culinary star Nick DiGiovanni: the Nick’s Kitchen YouTube channel has more than five million subscribers and over 875 million combined views, while the Chef Nick channel has 1.87 million subscribers and 4.3 billion views.

The days when Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos dismissed YouTube as a platform just for “killing time” or, at best, a “minor league” for talent sourcing seem very far away (yet it was only a year ago). Now, daily watch time data (where YouTube has overtaken Netflix) and the extraordinary results of the engagement report have forced the streaming giant to radically change its strategy.

Times change and platforms do too…

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AUSTRALIAN COMBO

Two classic mega-formats are heading back to Australian screens, shaking up what has been a relatively quiet summer season for unscripted TV.

The first is Ninja Warrior, which is being revived by Network 10. Produced by Banijay-owned Endemol Shine Australia, the new version is slated to air in 2027.

Originally titled Sasuke, this physical game show first debuted back in 1997 on Japan’s TBS network. An instant hit, it has been localized in over 25 territories. If you factor in tape sales of the original Japanese version or the American adaptation, it has been broadcast in over 150 countries worldwide.

Australia is no stranger to the franchise: Australian Ninja Warrior debuted on Nine Network in 2017 and ran for six seasons until 2022. The inaugural season smashed ratings records, quickly evolving into a true cultural phenomenon—making it somewhat surprising that Nine let the rights slip to competitor Network 10.

The concept is straightforward: a group of contenders—ranging from professional athletes and fitness enthusiasts to highly trained everyday people—attempt to complete a grueling, multi-stage obstacle course against the clock. The ultimate objective is to conquer the legendary final tower, Mount Midoriyama, within a strict time limit to claim the title of Ninja Warrior.

The second big return is ITV’s hit reality show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, created by London Weekend Television (now Lifted Entertainment / ITV Studios) and first broadcast on ITV in 2002. Adapted and localized in over 10 countries, the Australian version originally premiered on Network 10 in 2015 and ran there for 12 seasons through 2026, before making the jump to Seven Network.

This brand-new edition will premiere in 2027 on Seven and its streaming platform 7plus, produced by ITV Studios Australia. It will feature a fresh cast of celebrities tackling the show’s signature jungle challenges, grueling survival trials, and camp life as they vie for the title of King or Queen of the Jungle.

Fun fact: unlike the UK edition—which shoots in the Australian rainforest—the Australian version is actually filmed in South Africa. The quirky logic of global TV formats strikes again ;)

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AI PRANKS

One of the latest rising trends is AI Formats—unscripted TV shows that use artificial intelligence in creative and entertaining ways.

In the Argentine format Me, Myself & AI, guests come face-to-face with hyper-realistic versions of themselves at different stages of their lives, generated using custom AI tools.

Meanwhile, the Spanish dating show La Gran Cita uses AI to create the ‘perfect’ matches for 100 singles—though the participants’ actual choices don’t always match the algorithm’s predictions.

Taking a different approach, the Israeli-Brazilian format The Elevator Pitch introduces Caio Maia, an AI-powered investor who analyzes contestants’ business ideas in real time, evaluating both their weaknesses and growth potential.

However, the most entertaining example is the Spanish show CAPTCHA – No Soy un Robot (I Am Not a Robot). Contestants must solve a series of CAPTCHA tests—the challenges designed to prove you’re human—to show they aren’t AI-generated. Every time someone is eliminated, AI tools instantly transform them into a robot on screen.

Following this trend, ITV Studios’ Creative Network has partnered with famous radio prankster Steve Penk for a digital-first comedy: Steve Penk’s Animal Radio FM, which has launched on YouTube and TikTok. Zoo 55 will distribute the series across its wider digital ecosystem and social platforms.

Known as a pioneer of the prank call, Penk sees his classic comedy reimagined for today’s digital audience. Set in a surreal and hilarious animated world created with AI tools, Steve Penk’s Animal Radio FM takes place in a pirate radio station run by AI animals.

Perched on the top floor of a crumbling tower block overlooking a sprawling cityscape, cats, rats, chickens, and an ever-growing cast of eccentric creatures operate the station, broadcasting chaos to unsuspecting human callers.

Combining nostalgia, cutting-edge technology, and absurdist humor, the series creates a distinctive new visual universe where animal radio hosts relive some of Steve Penk’s most outrageous prank calls ever broadcast.

As with the best AI-driven shows, AI is used here for a clear purpose—adding a layer of absurdity—rather than feeling out of place or being used just to chase a “wow factor” that, frankly, no longer impresses anyone.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• RTVE and Zeppelin have begun filming the second season of the local adaptation of Race Across the World. The first season of Hasta el Fin del Mundo (this the local title) was the strongest debut for a reality competition show on La 1 since 2018.

  The 14 contestants of season two of La 1’s adventure talent show, Hasta el fin del mundo, have officially set off on their journey.

• Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) UK and Ireland has unveiled a 90-hour slate of new comedy and motoring content for its portfolio of channels, with new format Top Trumps: The Comedy Pack topping the bill. Produced by Fremantle-owned Talkback Thames and Naked, the series sees team captains Joel Dommett and Jon Richardson go head-to-head in a comedic version of the popular card game.

• WBD-owned Quest, meanwhile, has The Race Mechanic (w/t) set for this October. The series sees Shed and Burned alumni Sam Lovegrove take on races across the country as a race mechanic and occasional co-driver. It hails from Beagle Media. The network also has on tap a new Shed and Burned spinoff: Shed and Buried: Big Stuff. The series, produced by HCA Entertainment and coming to Quest in early 2027, explores the overlooked vehicles that once powered industry, from agricultural giants and working vehicles to icons of speed, travel and transport.

• The new season of The Challenge will see the iconic reality competition series move from its traditional home of Paramount cable net MTV to stream exclusively on Paramount+ when it launches on August 5. Season 42 of the series, titled The Challenge: Cutthroat, takes place in Thailand and features a mix of series veterans and newcomers battling for a share of the US$500,000 grand prize. The new season sees the Challengers divided into three teams with the only way to win being crossing the finish line together as a unit.

• TV Azteca and Disney+ have announced a strengthening of their partnership with the premiere of Survivor México: La Reliquia en Llamas, the latest season of the survival reality format, which will air simultaneously on both platforms. This new edition introduces a refreshed format dynamic, featuring new contestants and challenges that will elevate the level of competition. For the first time, contestants will need to gather the pieces of a mysterious relic whose power could reshape the course of the game and decide the fate of those remaining in the adventure.

• Seven.One Studios International has closed deals for a roster of formats across lifestyle, culinary, game show, reality and dating genres. Among them: Reality dating format Match My Ex has been optioned by Range Studios in the U.S. The format sees celebrity singles hand over the matchmaking reins to their ex-lovers; In Italy, Sky Uno has recommissioned culinary competition My Restaurant Rocks (4 Ristoranti) for a 12th season, as well as licensing a roster of tapes of the format; The improvisational comedy format Schiller Street was ordered to series by ERT in Greece, withthe 40-episode season launching earlier this year.

• Paramount+ will premiere the fourth season of Rio Shore across Latin America on August 6, filmed between late 2023 and early 2024, the launch of which had been suspended. Produced by Endemol Shine Brasil, the new installment was originally scheduled for 2024, but was postponed amid Paramount Global’s financial restructuring and the suspension of several company projects.

• TF1’s musical format Mystery Duet, distributed by Can’t Stop Media, is officially returning, bringing back the show where celebs accept to sing a duet without knowing with whom they will share the stage.

TASKMASTER: YOUR TIME STARTED IN 2015

It all started with Taskmaster, which has been airing in the UK since 2015—a hilarious action-comedy show created by Alex Horne, and directed and produced by Andy Devonshire for Avalon. In each episode, a panel of comedians must complete absurd tasks that require lateral thinking, speed, and creativity inside the Taskmaster House. The closing line of every task envelope is “Your time starts now.”

Three years later came The Button, also created by the Horne/Devonshire duo and produced by Avalon for BBC One. The concept was quite similar, but the format left the studio to enter the homes of everyday people. The title comes from the fact that families received instructions from an interactive button placed in their living rooms. The new show was well-received, but only one season was produced.

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, came Home Tasking. Horne (once again supported by Devonshire) launched this native spin-off series on YouTube, asking viewers from all over the world to film themselves performing absurd tasks using only what they had at home.

Fast forward to the summer of 2026. Channel 4 and Avalon have announced the pilot for Your Time Starts Now, with Horne once again as creator and Devonshire as director and producer. The new show officially merges these three previous experiences: it takes the devious tasks and cynical style of Taskmaster, the interactive and distribution structure of The Button (everyday families competing simultaneously from their living rooms), and the spirit of home-based resourcefulness tested on a massive scale with Home Tasking.

The concept is described as follows on the network’s official website:

“UK households compete against one another while tackling a host of his typically devious tasks without ever leaving their homes. Five teams of friends and families across the UK will need to display creativity, lateral thinking, speed, knowledge and teamwork if they want to win.”

This is essentially an IP extension, made up of successive ‘concentric spin-offs’ all within the “Taskmaster Universe.” It remains to be seen if the audience will embrace this latest “variation on a theme” as well.

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THE MONOPOLY PARADOX

Nostalgia Shows are a rapidly growing trend in global television, offering viewers a sense of comfort and escapism in today’s complex and uncertain times. These formats transport us back to “the good old days” in multiple ways—whether through the music and TV series of our youth, or the classic board games we played as children.

From household names like Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble to classic Bataille Navale (Sea Battle), the screen is increasingly ruled by familiar IPs. Even playground staples are finding new life, highlighted by recent competitive formats built around hide-and-seek, such as The House of Hide & Seek and All Stars Hide & Seek.

Now, the venerable Monopoly—originally published nearly a century ago in 1935—is officially joining the premium unscripted television lineup. Netflix has greenlit a major competition series based on the iconic board game.

The project is being co-produced by Studio Lambert (the powerhouse production team behind massive non-scripted hits like The Traitors and Squid Game: The Challenge) alongside Hasbro Entertainment. This marks a massive expansion of Hasbro’s television portfolio since they acquired the rights to the board game in 1991 from its original publisher, Parker Brothers. The series is slated to premiere in Autumn 2027, with casting currently underway worldwide.

The ambitious format will feature 12 contestants competing on a “life-sized, fully realized Monopoly Town Square,” inspired by the classic US edition of the board game. To survive, players must negotiate, scheme, and battle to accumulate properties and assets—or risk losing everything. Contestants will go bankrupt one by one until only a single winner remains. True to the high stakes of modern premium streaming, the final victor will take home a massive prize of $2 million USD, making it one of the largest cash prizes in unscripted television history.

The fascinating paradox of Monopoly lies in its origin. Developed during the height of the Great Depression—and heavily inspired by Lizzie Magie’s 1903 patent for The Landlord’s Game—the game was originally conceived to expose the inherent dangers of monopolies, predatory land ownership, and unregulated wealth accumulation.

Yet, in a twist of historical irony, it evolved into a global phenomenon that celebrates the very capitalist excess it was designed to critique. Today, it takes on an entirely new layer of contradiction: serving as a warm, nostalgic escape to the “good old days” while pitting modern contestants against each other for millions. A rather curious twist, don’t you think?

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K-POP EXPANSION

Mnet, the pay-TV music channel owned by Korean entertainment and retail giant CJ ENM, is partnering with Universal Music Group’s Republic Collective on a brand-new season of its hit singing competition format, Girls Planet.

This upcoming season represents the latest chapter of an ambitious project launched five years ago. The franchise began in mid-2021 with the debut of Girls Planet 999, a talent show featuring 99 female trainees. The spin-off global girl group, Kep1er, officially debuted on January 3, 2022. It proved to be a highly lucrative venture: upon release, the group achieved immediate commercial success, selling around 400,000 copies and peaking at number 1 on South Korea’s Gaon Album Chart. Today, Kep1er operates as a 6-piece group (originally a 9-member ensemble, before 3 members eventually departed).

Building on this momentum, Mnet launched the male counterpart, Boys Planet, in 2023, followed two years later by Boys II Planet in 2025. This subsequent iteration was specifically tailored for two different regions and languages (Korea and China), splitting early on into two distinct programs: Boys II Planet K (Korea) and Boys II Planet C (China).

Looking further back, both the Boys Planet and Girls Planet franchises are themselves structural successors to Mnet’s foundational music competition lineage: the ‘Produce’ series. This immensely popular block of K-pop talent shows ran between 2016 and 2019, spanning hits like Produce 101, Produce 101 Season 2, Produce 48, and Produce X 101—all engineered with the specific strategic goal of assembling highly successful, short-term promotional bands.

However, this new joint venture is tracking an even grander trajectory than its predecessors. Under the newly minted partnership, Republic Collective will collaborate across the entire lifecycle of the upcoming Girls Planet 2027. Their strategic involvement will scale from initial production all the way to the final group’s U.S. promotional strategy and global rollout next year.

Ultimately, the franchise stands out as a textbook case study in IP expansion—evolving seamlessly from a chain of interconnected spin-offs into a worldwide music and live-event powerhouse on a truly planetary scale.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Talpa Studios has secured two new international deals. The first international adaptation of the reality format Alliance premiered on June 26 on Prime Video India. Produced by Banijay Asia, the Hindi-language series features 16 celebrity “Allies” competing in a high-stakes game of strategy, trust, and betrayal.

  Furthermore, following its successful debut on SBS6 in the Netherlands, France Télévisions has commissioned the first international adaptation of the talent show The Winner Takes It All, produced by the Satisfaction Group. In this format, 50 singers each stand on their own square on a LED floor, with every square representing a different hit song. Their mission is simple: to outsing, outsmart, and outshine their opponents until only one contestant remains to claim the €100,000 prize.

• RTVE has unveiled the third season of The Floor, the hit game show distributed globally by Talpa Studios and produced in Spain in collaboration with Stratos Studios. The format is set to return to La 1 soon, featuring significant updates to the gameplay and a special charity edition starring celebrities. The most notable change this season is a new strategic option for contestants. Going forward, players who win three consecutive duels will have a choice: they can either take the traditional five-second time bonus or swap their category with any other player on the board, adding an exciting new tactical layer to the game.

• Keshet International has secured a second Belgian adaptation for its children’s gameshow format The Search Kids, after RTBF commissioned a remake for its youth platform, Auvio Kids. The deal marks the seventh international adaptation of The Search format. Produced by Free Kings, RTBF’s Soupe de Mots (Wordsoup) becomes the second Belgian adaptation of The Search format, following the successful launch of the producer’s Flemish remake Lettersoep (Alphabet Soup) on VRT last autumn.

• Japanese network Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) is adapting its competition format Kisuke in the American market alongside A Smith & Co Productions.

  The project, titled Dumb Luck in the US market, is being spearheaded by TBS’s American subsidiary TBS International. The family-friendly format is based on chance and, per a description, requires “no smarts, zero skill and absolutely no strength or stamina” on the part of the contestants. Participants are pitted against one another in luck-based obstacles and hope to avoid the punishment of freezing water, electric shocks and explosive flour cannons.

• Fremantle Italia has announced that it will co-produce a new Italian version of The Wall, the hit game show. The new season premiered on July 13 in the Canale 5 access prime-time slot, hosted by Max Giusti. The production was commissioned by Mediaset following the success of the first two Italian seasons. It will be produced by RTI in partnership with Fremantle, in collaboration with Glassman Media, The SpringHill Company, and Universal Television Alternative Studio.

• Netflix has ordered a French version of its sports competition format Physical 100.

  The French version, titled 100% Physique, is produced by Banijay France label Adventure Line Productions nd adapted from the original South Korean version created by MBC producer Jang Ho-gi. The format sees 100 athletes of all ages and from a wide range of sporting backgrounds, including martial arts, bodybuilding, CrossFit, rugby and athletics, compete in a sports competition with the goal of finding out which athlete is in the best physical shape.

• After being cut by Network 10 in May I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! has a new home in Australia. The Seven Network has confirmed it will take over the reality competition show in 2027, and will be produced by ITV Studios Australia in partnership with Southern Cross Media Group.

• The UK’s Channel 4 has expanded the slate for its digital-first channel, Channel 4.0, which operates on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. Dropping on Channel 4.0 this summer are a new Nella Rose-fronted series, Are They a Keeper?, and The Chosen One, which is an evolution of the popular Channel 4.0 show The Intern. After piloting the shows, Channel 4.0 has also ordered more episodes of Kids Table and Dating Dad from Welsh prodcos Nimble Productions and Crash Productions respectively, supported by Media Cymru via 4Skills. Channel 4.0 has also recommissioned another 20×20′ run of Savage Sundays from After Party Studios.

• Brazilian pay television channel GNT has given the green light to the production of Dog House Brasil, a local adaptation of the international format The Dog House, distributed by Banijay following its merger with All3Media. Produced by Boxfish, the new local version will premiere this year on both the pay TV channel and Globoplay. The reality show follows rescue dogs in search of a forever home. Throughout the episodes, a team of specialists will work to match each animal with the most suitable family.

  

Turning scripted content into unscripted shows is a widespread trend. Take, for instance, the competition game based on the 007 movies (007: Road to a Million), the quiz show for Friends fans set in the series’ iconic locations (Fast Friends), or the baking show set in Hogwarts (Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking), among others.

One of the most highly anticipated formats in this vein is Wonka’s The Golden Ticket, a Netflix series based on Roald Dahl’s original 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Netflix acquired The Roald Dahl Story Company in 2021). We discussed this in a previous issue, and now we can add that the show will debut on September 23, with a two-part finale streaming a week later on September 30.

The format—described, as usual, with the overused label of ‘social experiment’—is a competition show featuring 12 “golden ticket winners” along with a partner of their choosing, who will navigate a series of Wonka-esque temptations and challenges designed to push them both physically and psychologically. Not much else is known for now, so it is too early to tell whether the innovation is merely aesthetic or if there is something more compelling in the concept itself.

Actually, one other detail has been revealed, and it is causing quite a stir: the show’s voiceover will feature the voice of Gene Wilder (the unforgettable Willy Wonka from the 1971 film adaptation), recreated using AI. In a statement on behalf of the estate, Karen B. Wilder, Gene Wilder’s widow, praised the show for celebrating “the warmth and imagination that he brought to the role, introducing that magic to a new generation while honoring the fans who have cherished it for decades.”

This falls into a now widespread trend that I call “dead fake”: recreating the voices and faces of deceased actors or celebrities using advanced AI techniques. The list is already quite long: Ian Holm was ‘brought back to life’ for several sequences in the movie Alien: Romulus; German actress Christiane Maybach was ‘recreated’ for the 30th anniversary of the RTL soap opera Unter Uns; Agatha Christie ‘gives’ online video lessons for aspiring crime writers via the BBC Maestro; and, more recently, Val Kilmer reappeared in the film As Deep As the Grave (watch the trailer here).

This is a practice that will certainly spark debate and raise eyebrows. However, it is becoming increasingly common in scripted content—and from now on, in unscripted as well.

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VIVE LE FORT!

For 36 years, one legendary television format has also been an island—and a true broadcasting phenomenon - and personally, one of my all-time favorite action game shows. I’m talking about the legendary Fort Boyard (the adjective is more than appropriate in this case), the iconic action-adventure game show that has been on the air since 1990, debuting on Antenne 2 before moving to France 2 in 1992.

The series is filmed on location at the actual Fort Boyard, a sea fortress located in the Pertuis d’Antioche strait on the west coast of France. Measuring 61 meters in length, 31 meters in width, and 20 meters in height, the imposing stone structure provides an unmatched, highly atmospheric backdrop.

At the heart of the show’s lore is Père Fouras (“Father Fouras”), the centenarian guardian of the fort’s keys, brought to life by three different actors over the program’s history. His exact age remains a mystery; according to legend, he helped build the fortress and subsequently made it his home, spending his winters in total secrecy devising devilish new challenges. Since 1990, he has welcomed contestants to his lookout tower, testing them with visual riddles, mathematical puzzles, or word definitions depending on the season.

The fort is also populated by a colorful recurring cast, each with their own distinct backstory. Key figures include the iconic guides who lead teams between challenges, formidable guardians like Jacques and Jules, and the wrestlers Mr. Boo and Lady Boo, who are tasked with hauling defeated players to the dungeon. This rich ensemble ensures the show is far more than a simple competitive format; it is a multi-layered narrative that seamlessly blends scripted mythology with unscripted reality television.

Now launching its 37th season with fresh gameplay, brand-new twists, and Cyril Féraud stepping in as the new host, the evergreen franchise continues to expand its footprint across both digital and scripted spaces.

Ahead of the summer premiere, France TV and Banijay France teamed up with top French streamer Domingo for an exclusive, creator-led digital special. In a historic live Twitch broadcast, Domingo alongside fellow creators Baghera, ZeratoR, and Clemquicourt explored the legendary fortress and faced its trials. This digital-first collaboration culminated in a dedicated one-hour episode that has already generated massive engagement across France.tv and Domingo’s YouTube channel.

Further capitalizing on the brand’s versatility, Screenline (a Banijay France label) has just wrapped production on a 90-minute feature-length crime drama, Meurtres à Fort Boyard (Murders at Fort Boyard), for France TV. As the latest addition to the highly successful Meurtres à... anthology collection, the thriller turns the historic fortress into a crime scene, forcing two clashing investigators to navigate its secret corridors to solve a high-stakes mystery.

The legend of Fort Boyard continues to thrive, bridging linear television, digital platforms, and scripted fiction. Longue vie au Fort !

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EXPEDITION IN GREENLAND

More news from the French public broadcaster, which has been highly active recently both in localizing international formats and creating new ones (such as the spectacular and ambitious L’Anneau / The Ring, which in my opinion was one of the best reality/competition shows of last season: see the description here).

France Télévisions has just announced an adaptation of the original Belgian format, The Expedition. The show originally aired in Belgium on Play and the SVOD platform STREAMZ, spanning three 8 x 60’ seasons set in Greenland, Namibia, and Patagonia. It was produced by the award-winning indie Roses Are Blue and distributed by Primitives.

In this adventure reality format, eight celebrities are challenged to navigate extreme environments, testing their endurance, teamwork, and resilience in the face of nature’s toughest conditions. The new French adaptation is set to air next winter season and was filmed in Greenland earlier this year. The series was commissioned by France Télévisions and produced by Warner Bros. International Television Production France.

Braving the desolate Arctic Circle Trail in Greenland during the depths of winter, contestants face bone-chilling temperatures as low as -40°C (-55°C wind chill), pushing their physical and mental limits to discover what they are truly capable of. Under the guidance of a seasoned polar expert, the group undergoes extensive training before facing the brutal reality of Greenland’s icy wilderness.

Battling exhaustion, self-doubt, and the ever-present threat of nature’s might, the expedition thoroughly tests their endurance and teamwork. Yet despite these struggles, the group consistently finds strength in moments of camaraderie and the pure simplicity of life on the ice.

To be fair, the concept isn't highly original—L’Anneau was far more innovative, introducing almost video-game-like mechanics. Nevertheless, the striking setting and extreme conditions of the location should guarantee its success among fans of the genre.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Endemol Shine Brasil, part of Banijay Americas, has secured the first international adaptation of Banijay Entertainment’s entertainment format Upside Down, with Globo ommissioning a Brazilian version of the series. Originally created by EndemolShine Nederland, part of Banijay Benelux, the format will make Brazil the second market to produce the show following its debut in the Netherlands. Two teams of celebrity families compete inside a television studio that is literally turned upside down.

• Bell Media-owned streamer Crave is slating new dating series Temptations Under the Sun: Cyprus for an August 7 premiere and will drop two episodes each week until the finale on September 4. Based on the French-language series OD: Tentations Au Soleil, also on Crave, the 10-episode show follows 17 Canadian singles as they face temptation, strategy and unexpected twists under the Mediterranean sun.

• Vietnamese broadcaster VTV9 is bringing back Banijay-owned modelling format The Face after a three-year hiatus. The fifth season of the competition reality series will air on VTV9 this October, produced by Ho Chi Minh City-based prodco Multimedia JSC. The Face previously ran in Vietnam for four seasons between 2016 and 2023 on VTV. The format sees three successful fashion icons lead a team of aspiring young models, each competing to become ‘the face’ of a well-known brand.

• Netflix will continue its push into the reality dating space with the new series Let’s Marry Harry, which drops seven episodes on August 5, and the finale hitting a week later on August 12. The series features Harry Jowsey, who broke out as a heartthrob on the previous Netflix dating shows Too Hot to Handle and Perfect Match. After spending years in the public dating spotlight — and getting it wrong — Jowsey has ceded control of his dating life to his close friends Amanda Kloots, Georgia Hassarati and Sonny Henty, who will guide him through a carefully selected pool of potential matches as he searches for authentic love and, hopefully, marriage.

• NBCUniversal’s Hayu reality streaming service is teaming with Vancouver-based prodco Lark Productions on Summer House Canada, the first international adaptation of the hit Bravo reality series. Production on the Canadian series is currently underway in Muskoka, Ontario, with the series set to launch exclusively on Hayu in 2027. Following the original Summer House format, the Canadian adaptation assembles a group of friends who get away to a shared house on summer weekends.

• Bravo is debuting its second unscripted original microseries on Wednesday (July 8), following salon owner Madison LeCroy and five of her clients. The 52-episode Salon Confessionals with Madison LeCroy, available on the Peacock mobile app, hails from Micromaker and sister company Haymaker East.

• AMC-owned cable net WEtv will explore the topic of age-gap relationships with the new dating series Age Inappropriate, which premieres on August 7 and streaming same-day on All Reality. Exploring issues around age-gap relationships such as power dynamics, family pressure, stereotypes and financial imbalance, the series discusses whether experience, money and life-stage are insurmountable differences and whether couples separated by decades can build a lasting love, digging into what makes these relationships work — or fail.

  

  Thanks for reading FRIDAY'S ESPRESSO! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Once upon a time, media scholar Jean K. Chalaby dubbed an era the age of the “superformat” (The Format Age – Polity Press, 2016). Among these global juggernauts, none reigned more supreme than Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Since premiering on Friday, September 4, 1998—after initially being rejected by ITV itself, Channel 4, and Channel 5—the quiz show has been adapted in 117 territories and expanded into 140 different ancillary product lines, from board games to Christmas crackers.

It is entirely logical, then, that in today’s era of hyper-fragmentation—where the shared, ritualistic television moments of the past are down to a rare few (the World Cup comes to mind, but what fills the gaps the rest of the year?)—broadcasters are aggressively reviving these iconic classics to recapture that old-school scheduling magic.

UK commercial broadcaster ITV has done just that, handing a massive 35-episode recommission to the franchise. This includes 20 new episodes of Millionaire Hot Seat, the fast-paced spin-off that debuted on the network this past January, alongside a further 15 episodes of the flagship original show. Both series are produced by Belfast-based Stellify Media, the Sony Pictures Television-backed indie powerhouse behind the modern iteration of the brand.

Hosted by Jeremy Clarkson (pictured), Millionaire Hot Seat introduces a high-stakes, rapid-fire queue system to the traditional money ladder. Six contestants rotate through the game under a strict countdown clock, with a tactical “Pass” lifeline acting as their only safety net. Passing sends a player to the back of the line but forces the next contestant to answer immediately. Any incorrect answer or expired clock triggers an instant elimination, slashes the total jackpot potential, and forces the next player directly into the hot seat.

The strategy is clearly paying dividends for the broadcaster. The spin-off’s freshman run proved to be a major ratings driver, launching with 4.3 million viewers, averaging 3.7 million across consolidated viewing, and cementing its place as ITVX’s third most-watched entertainment series of the year behind only Britain’s Got Talent and The Masked Singer. Meanwhile, the flagship series hit a seasonal high after recently crowning a new £1 million jackpot winner.

With production slated to begin later this year for broadcast on ITV and streaming on ITVX, all eyes will be on whether this modern spin on a classic can continue to mint television gold.

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VIRGIN GERMANS

In the absence of fresh “great unscripted classics,” linear networks and premium streaming platforms are finding tactical ways to capture highly fragmented audiences. The current playbook? Build “newsworthy” programs—buzzy, PR-driving events engineered to generate instant hype and evolve into true “must-see” TV.

One of the most effective levers to pull is a cleverly provocative focus on sexual content, packaged neatly under the respectable guise of a “social experiment.” There is absolutely nothing new or wrong with taking this approach; it is a time-honored industry staple that has always worked and always will.

Double Act’s breakout format Virgin Island is a textbook case study: it is undeniably provocative on the surface, but exceptionally well-produced and anchored by a deeply relatable modern theme.

Distributed globally by Passion Distribution, the series premiered in mid-2025 on the UK’s Channel 4. It starts from a sociological premise: despite living in an increasingly hypersexualized culture, the age at which young adults are losing their virginity is actually on the rise globally. Modern research points to a perfect storm of factors: easy access to online pornography, compounding feelings of loneliness, and pervasive body-image anxiety.

The format gathers a group of adult virgins at a luxury retreat to undergo intensive somatic and intimacy therapy with professional sexologists—with the unspoken, yet obvious, ultimate goal of helping them take their first sexual steps.

The numbers behind the format speak for themselves. The maiden UK season delivered a barnstorming performance, landing a massive 33.5% consolidated share among 16–34-year-olds. It became the largest streaming launch in Channel 4’s history across any genre, outperforming slot benchmarks four times over and smashing records that had stood since the launch of Supernanny 21 years prior.

Building on that momentum, season 2 launched in late April 2026, pushing those crucial young demographic figures up by another 11% year-on-year, while amassing over 13 million views on social channels like TikTok.

Unsurprisingly, this breakout performance has triggered swift international expansion. Alongside finished-tape sales to markets like TVNZ (New Zealand) and SBS (Australia), local adaptations are hitting the market. Following a Dutch commission by public broadcaster BNNVARA (produced by Concept Street) earlier this year, the format has now landed in Germany.

Produced by RTL Studios for the streaming platform RTL+, the German adaptation recently wrapped filming at a beachfront location in Mexico, tracking ten young men and women confronting their deep-seated intimacy blocks.

Ultimately, Virgin Island delivers exactly what modern platforms are desperate for: a show tailored to spark intense debate on social media, effectively clawing back the younger demographics currently fleeing linear channels. It earns full marks for execution and marketability. That said, let’s be honest: the 'social experiment' label is just a beautifully dressed-up excuse to sell great, noisy reality TV. And we love it for that ;)

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SKATING IN JAPAN (& IN THE US)

And finally there are competition shows, which (almost) always deliver—provided they are spectacular and guarantee a heavy dose of adrenaline. One of the freshest and most compelling examples is undoubtedly the Japanese format Kasso, produced by TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) and on the air since 2023.

True to its title (kasso 滑走 literally means “to glide” or “to slide” in Japanese), the format blends the country’s distinct mastery of the genre (who could forget TBS’s own iconic Takeshi’s Castle and Ninja Warrior - Sasuke?) with the world of skateboarding.

A curated lineup of top domestic and international skaters takes on a massive outdoor course divided into three main stages. It is not just about landing high-scoring tricks; it is about surviving video-game-inspired time trials where speed, balance, and risk management are everything. Following two preliminary rounds (Midoriyama/Downhill and Uzushio/Vortice), the competition culminates in the spectacular finale: Tokyo Upside-Down. This stage features a massive, 180-meter-long, three-story vertical structure packed with highly challenging geometric obstacles. Skaters who cross the finish line within the time limit walk away with a substantial cash prize.

The format was an instant hit, quickly expanding into multiple seasons and special installments in Japan. However, Kasso’s true standout feature is its distribution strategy. TBS immediately launched an official YouTube channel, uploading full episodes with English subtitles, racking up millions of views, and directly tapping into the global skate community.

Furthering this momentum, TBS Games rolled out the official mobile spin-off this past February, Kasso Gaiden: Escape from the Skaterverse, which was equally well-received by core fans.

Building on these digital successes, the IP has now successfully transitioned into the real world. The format made its physical US debut with the Kasso Fest Skate & Sound in Long Beach, California. The two-day festival (held on March 21–22) combined a live music lineup with a game-show-style skate competition, drawing over 4,000 fans. The event is available via the link at the end of the article —it is absolutely worth a look.

While the festival was initially livestreamed via Red Bull TV, the definitive “Original TV Edit” is making its official YouTube premiere this summer. Following the release of Day 1 in late June, the highly anticipated Day 2 is set to premiere on the platform today July 3rd. This episodic YouTube rollout features exclusive, re-edited content not seen in the original live broadcast.

All in all, Kasso stands as a textbook example of a great format backed by a cohesive, multi-platform, and genuinely innovative brand expansion.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Talpa Studios has secured a new commission for Most Wanted, with leading French broadcaster M6 ordering a local adaptation for its channel and streaming platform M6+. The commission marks the format's launch in France, following successful adaptations in the Netherlands, Germany, and Hungary. Co-created by Talpa Studios and Signal.Stream, the format will air in France under the title Wanted: Catch Me If You Can, produced by Studio 89, the in-house production arm of M6 Group.

• Something Special, the Seoul-based international format agency, has announced the acquisition of three popular new Korean formats for international distribution: The Scout, a transformational singing reality show; the family travel reality series Granny Goes Global; and From Unknown to Legend, a talent competition program.

• WBITVP (Warner Bros. International Television Production) France has acquired the option rights to adapt The Celeb Challenge, the successful Spanish prime time talent show produced by 7yAcción and represented internationally by Onza Distribution. The format, originally titled El Desafío in Spain, has become one of the most successful entertainment shows on Spanish television, leading prime time audiences across six seasons on Atresmedia. Its combination of spectacular challenges, TV personalities and high production values has turned it into a benchmark in entertainment programming.

• Australian commercial broadcaster 10 is prepping a local adaptation of the ITV format Parent’s Evening, created by UK prodco Ranga Bee, with Australian comedian and actor Shaun Micallef. with his son Gabe, with the local title Shaun Micallef’s Parent’s Evening. The cross-generational game show will bring three well-known Australians and their grown-up children or parents, with the parents being tasked with guessing how well their children will fare on questions about a particular topic. The series will be produced by ITV Studios Australia and shopped by ITV Studios, which also handles format rights.

• ITV Studios’ travel reality competition format Worlds Apart is expanding internationally for the first time to Denmark. The format was commissioned by pubcaster DR, with production underway from ITV Studios Denmark. The series pairs teens who have never left their home country with adults who think their traveling days are behind them for a high-stakes treasure hunt through different cities. The original show was produced in 2025 by ITV Studios-backed South Shore for Channel 4.

• Central TV has partnered with NBCUniversal Formats to launch the first international adaptation of business competition format On Brand, to be fronted by the Mongolian broadcaster’s CEO. Produced locally as On Brand Mongolia, the series is currently in pre-production and will air weekly in primetime on Central TV in the fourth quarter of 2026. The adaptation is the first time the format has been produced outside the US and marks NBCU Formats’ ninth format adaptation in Mongolia. Originally created and executive produced by Jimmy Fallon, On Brand gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process behind major marketing campaigns by challenging contestants to develop bold campaigns for leading brands.

The “Pasapalabra case” has taken another unexpected turn. Following last month’s parallel rulings (see here)—where, on one hand, the Madrid Provincial Court ordered Mediaset España to pay UK broadcaster and producer ITV Studios €73.2 million in damages, while on the other, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that the intellectual property rights to the show’s iconic final round, “El Rosco,” do not belong to ITV but are instead owned by the Dutch production company MC&F—a new twist has emerged.

Last Friday, Antena 3 debuted the new edition of the ITV game show featuring a brand-new finale called “A la Z” (AlaZ), which replaces “El Rosco,” a segment they can no longer use. So, where does this new game come from? To secure stronger legal protection against any potential lawsuit by Mediaset, the network opted for a format owned by RSI—the public broadcaster of Italian-speaking Switzerland—called DallAZetA (‘From A to Z’), which originally aired two years ago.

The game is clearly inspired by the final wheel of Passaparola (the Italian version) but features several key differences—most notably, the letters are arranged linearly rather than in a circle. Rather than reading a lengthy explanation, you can watch it directly via this link, as the RSI Play platform is freely accessible without a VPN.

It is worth adding that the format’s IP is 100% owned by RSI, given that it is an original, in-house creation and production. Unlike other broadcasters, even the creators are internal staff rather than freelancers, meaning the chain of title is incredibly solid—practically unassailable.

The initial ratings were remarkably strong, partly driven by inevitable viewer curiosity: the show pulled in 1.597 million viewers, securing a 21.9% share (nearly two percentage points higher than The Wheel of Fortune the previous day). Meanwhile, the final segment recorded a 26.1% audience share, peaking at 28.3% during its climax. It remains to be seen whether it will sustain these numbers moving forward, considering that Pasapalabra will also be competing with World Cup matches in the coming days.

But most importantly, we shall see what unfolds over the next few months, as the match is far from finished and further twists and turns are to be expected. Of this, I can assure you!

(In the pictures below: the Swiss version and the Spanish version of the game)

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APP + SOCIAL + TV = THE NEW MEDIA ECOSYSTEM

A defining characteristic of the new media ecosystem is ‘multi-access’—an evolution of legacy cross-, multi-, and transmedia models. Today, content must be seamlessly consumable across multiple platforms, devices, and contexts simultaneously.

Contemporary audiovisual media operates in an era of hyper-abundance. Never in history has so much content been produced, distributed, and shared. Premium films, streaming series, documentaries, short-form videos, live streams, video podcasts, social clips, branded content, educational formats, gaming, and user-generated materials all compete for the exact same finite resource: the viewer’s limited attention.

In this landscape, the primary challenge is no longer production; it is discoverability, recognition, and relevance. Consequently, driving discovery and consumption through diverse entry points has become mission-critical.

A prime example of this emerging multi-content model is Double Date Island. Produced by the UK’s Cowshed Studios, this next-gen dating series pieces together disparate elements of the digital landscape like a jigsaw puzzle. The project unites the dating app Tinder, social media powerhouse TikTok, and ITV Studios’ (ITVS) brand-powered content division, Studio 55, alongside ITVS’s digital distribution unit, Zoo 55.

This multi-platform format is built around Tinder’s Double Date feature. The series will follow pairs of best friends selected from various international territories—including the US, UK, Australia, and several European countries—as they embark on a “sun-drenched getaway” in Portugal.

Co-developed by Studio 55 and distributed by Zoo 55, the series is backed by OMD, Tinder’s EMEA agency for media strategy, planning, and buying. Reflecting modern digital compliance, the content is tailored strictly for adults; when the series launches this summer, it will be gated exclusively to TikTok users aged 18 and over.

The partnership, timed alongside the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, marks a significant milestone for the platforms involved. For TikTok, it cements its evolution into “the home of landmark entertainment moments, not merely a discovery tool.” For Tinder, this first venture into serialized unscripted programming reflects a strategic push “to create more social, dynamic spaces where connection feels effortless and fun.”

The era of 'multi-access' has begun, and the potential models are endless.

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3 COUNTRIES FOR A MINIGOLF

Naturally, alongside emerging digital and decentralized media models, ‘classic’ television formats built for mainstream broadcasters continue to thrive. Traditional television is far from dead—contrary to recurring industry obituaries—and is instead demonstrating a remarkable structural resilience.

A textbook (triple) example of this is Holey Moley, the blockbuster US format created by Eureka Productions and distributed globally by Fremantle, which originally made its debut on ABC in 2019. Falling squarely within the physical “Funny Game” genre (as highlighted in our recent report), the action-packed game show is frequently described as a sort of “Ninja Warrior of mini-golf.” It is a highly spectacular, comedy-forward competition where amateur players face off on a giant, obstacle-course-style miniature golf track packed with wind machines, oversized inflatables, ziplines, and massive water slides.

In France, public broadcaster TF1 has officially commissioned the format under the title Crazy Mini Golf, scheduled to air this summer (with the exact premiere date yet to be announced). To capture younger, digitally native demographics, TF1 has handed hosting duties to McFly and Carlito—one of France’s most popular and heavily followed creator duos. This marks their major debut leading a flagship, prime-time entertainment program on linear broadcast television, highlighting a strategic bridge between traditional networks and internet culture.

The format is also making its way to Germany via streaming infrastructure, set to premiere soon on Prime Video Germany as Holey Moley – Minigolf Extreme. The German series will bring together an eclectic cast of Olympic champions, world minigolf champions, reality TV stars, and self-proclaimed armchair professionals, all competing on epic courses designed to test their skill, courage, and sense of humor.

Meanwhile, the game will be on air also in the UK, where ITV has commissioned Holey Moley, with presenting duo Ant & Dec at the helm. As usual, in the series, top-tier professionals, fearless thrill-seekers, and a host of familiar faces will take on the courses.

The most compelling aspect of this multi-territory expansion is how Fremantle has centralized its production pipeline by constructing a massive European production hub in Portimão, Portugal. Filming for all three European versions takes place entirely within this single, mega-scale themed infrastructure, allowing broadcasters to dramatically optimize set-up and physical production costs. While the localized versions rely on distinct creative partners—Fremantle France handles the French edition, UFA Show & Factual co-produces the German series, and Talkback alongside Mitre Studios (the Ant & Deck’s production company) drives the UK production—they all plug into the same centralized hardware footprint.

Ultimately, this localized blitz demonstrates that classic entertainment formats are continuing to evolve—at least from a strategic and production standpoint—to successfully adapt to the modern economic realities of international entertainment media.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• The 4th season of Drag Race France is set to premiere on Wednesday, July 8, 2026, in a late-night timeslot (10:45 PM) on France 2, with a simultaneous streaming release on the france.tv platform (and internationally on WOW Presents Plus).

  The local adaptation is produced by Endemol France and Shake Shake Shake, while World of Wonder (WOW)—the US production company founded by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the original creators of RuPaul’s global franchise—retains oversight as executive producer.

• Keshet International has secured a seventh licensing deal for its children’s musical talent show Master Class, partnering with ALPHA Cyprus for a new primetime local adaptation titled Music School. Originally created by Yoav Tzafir, Tamira Yardeni, and Zvika Hadar for Keshet 12, Master Class is an uplifting musical talent show where children perform beloved classics in a supportive, non-competitive environment.

• Talpa Studios (founded by John de Mol) and Signal.Stream’s reality format A.S.S. – Anti Survival Show has been recommissioned for a second season by Dutch broadcaster NET5, following a breakout debut on streamer KIJK. The format strands outspoken reality personalities on a deserted beach, forcing them to endure harsh conditions while a luxury yacht waits tantalizingly just offshore.

• The BBC will air a special celebrity version of its popular Gladiators competition format in 2027, alongside the fourth series of the standard show. The Gladiators Celebrity Special is a standalone episode that will feature four celebrities who will enter Sheffield arena to see whether they can measure up to the team of Gladiators to claim victory.

• Atresmedia and Fremantle España are forging ahead with the Spanish adaptation of Caught in the Middle. Originally created by Talpa Studios, the game show is set to air on Antena 3 and will be co-produced by Fremantle España. To maximize production efficiencies, filming will take place at Talpa’s international production hub in the Netherlands.

• UK pay TV broadcaster Sky has commissioned an immersive documentary format called The Wargame, adapted from the Sky News podcast of the same name.

  Produced by The Garden, the ITV Studios-owned prodco, the 4×60’ series features politicians and public figures including Michael Gove, former Conservative cabinet minister, and Nicola Sturgeon, the former leader of the Scottish National Party. In a crisis-room-style environment, the cast take on roles such as prime minister, defence secretary and attorney general as they navigate a fictional high-stakes scenario: a Russian attack on UK soil.

• Canal 4 in Uruguay and Sony Pictures Television have inked a deal to adapt the international format Raid The Cage and establish a regional production hub in Uruguay for upcoming international versions. Broadcast in Latin America as Escape perfecto, Raid The Cage originated in Israel in 2013 and has already spawned over 20 international adaptations in countries including the United States, Mexico, Italy, Portugal, Argentina, Turkey, and Chile.

• Warner Bros. International Television Production (WBITVP) has optioned the French adaptation rights to the hit Spanish format El Desafío (The Challenge). Created by 7 y Acción, the show is distributed internationally by Onza Distribution under the English title The Celeb Challenge. The deal paving the way for WBITVP’s French division to develop and explore a local version of the program for the French market. Produced by 7 y Acción, The Celeb Challenge features celebrities facing a grueling series of physical and mental challenges each week, performed in front of a live studio audience and a panel of judges. Since its launch, the format has been sold to more than 15 countries.

• Banijay Rights has unveiled two new MasterChef adaptations set to launch in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan next year. MasterChef Uzbekistan will debut on Zo’r TV with a 10-episode season from New Media Group, while pubcaster Ictimai TV will bring the 10-episode MasterChef Azerbaijan to screens in that country.

• Netflix has ordered a new iteration of Hot Ones, the chicken wing-eating format that has built a loyal following on YouTube, as well as a competition series spin-off to its hit preschool show Gabby’s Dollhouse. Hot Ones: Extra Heat will launch exclusively on Netflix on July 13, with the first episode premiering following the T-Mobile Home Run Derby, a baseball event that sees some of the biggest hitters in baseball compete to see who can hit the most home runs.

• Netflix has acquired the second season of Indian stand-up comedian Samay Raina’s YouTube comedy talent show India’s Got Latent, with new episodes simulcast on the video sharing platform. Hosted by Raina, the Hindi-language talent show launched on YouTube in 2024 and is inspired by the international Got Talent franchise and podcast hit Kill Tony.

  

WEREWOLVES ON PUBLIC TV

The ‘strange’ (but increasingly strategic) alliances between Disney+ and European linear networks—often public broadcasters—continue to flourish. Following successful partnerships with Spain’s RTVE, Italy’s RAI, ARD and ZDF in Germany, and SIC in Portugal, it is now the turn of Dutch public broadcaster NPO, which has announced its first co-distribution deal for the Dutch version of Wolven: Het Spel van List en Bedrog (Wolves: The Game of Deceit and Betrayal).

This partnership marks a significant shift in strategy for the public broadcaster. Produced by SimpelZodiak (part of Banijay Benelux), Wolven will launch on NPO 1 via BNNVARA on August 29. Crucially, the series will simultaneously be available to stream on NPO Start and Disney+, with new episodes dropping weekly.

The format was created by Fary and Panayotis Pascot, owned by Jaad Productions and Presque Prod, and originally commissioned and broadcast by Canal+ in France (followed by a German adaptation on ARD). It is based on the famous French board game Les Loups-Garous de Thiercelieux (published by Asmodee), which has sold over 7 million copies worldwide. Globally represented by StudioCanal and Dreamspark, the property is part of Banijay Entertainment’s third-party portfolio, with the group driving adaptations across its international footprint.

In short, the show is a close cousin to The Traitors (which, in turn, is based on the same social deduction mechanics), just with Werewolves instead of Traitors. For 13 days, in a remote village deep in the forest, 13 players—the Villagers—compete for a cash prize. However, hidden among them are the Wolves: a secret group intent on eliminating the other players one by one to claim the jackpot. The villagers must rely entirely on deduction to uncover these hidden threats. Each night, the wolves secretly choose a victim, while during the day, the villagers vote to banish someone in the hope of unmasking a wolf. Will the Villagers manage to eliminate the threat in time?

The format fits perfectly into the well-proven trend of ‘psycho-formats’ (see our report 10+1 Global Formats Trends), currently one of the most dominant genres in the market. But in this case, the most compelling takeaway is the tightening web of alliances between Disney+ and linear networks. While public and commercial broadcasters were once the streamers’ main rivals, they are now becoming valuable allies in a broader counter-YouTube strategy—the real enemy for everyone ;)

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GERMAN BAD BOYFRIENDS

In the new, hyper-fragmented media landscape, dating shows and romance-focused formats remain a bulletproof certainty. For some time now, however, alongside “classic” dating setups—where a single seeks a partner from a pool of suitors—several variations on the theme have emerged. It’s a trend we have dubbed ‘Love Beyond Boundaries’ (see our report, 10+1 Global Format Trends: request your free copy in the comments). One of the most compelling examples of this evolution is Optomen’s reality format, Bad Boyfriends, which originally launched on ITV2 and ITVX in the UK.

The latest industry news is that German streaming platform RTL+ is launching the format’s first international adaptation, under the local title Bad Boyfriends – Jetzt Wird Abgerechnet (literally: Now is the time for reckoning). Produced by Filmpool Entertainment, the 10-episode series will drop in double weekly installments over a five-week run, starting June 30, 2026.

The concept is brilliantly simple: eight men get the surprise of their lives. Lured to Tenerife under the pretense of filming a wild, sun-soaked bachelors’ reality show called “Bro Island,” they think they are entering a paradise of luxury villas and endless parties. But “Bro Island” doesn’t exist. The twist hits right after the first party: the men are blindsided by their actual girlfriends, who signed them up to face a ruthless relationship reckoning after growing exhausted by empty promises, ego trips, controlling behavior, jealousy, and chronic immaturity.

While the women take over the luxury villa, the “bad boyfriends” are downgraded to a lackluster “Bro-Zone” trailer camp. Hosted by Charlotte Engelhardt and Calvin Kleinen (pictured), the show puts communication, trust, loyalty, and honesty to the test through rigorous relationship bootcamps and uncomfortable confrontations. Ultimately, the series poses the ultimate question: who will seize the opportunity to change, and who will fall right back into old patterns?

In this case, the narrative focus completely shifts from finding a new partner to consolidating an existing relationship. By raising the stakes for real-life couples, the format unlocks a significantly richer, more unpredictable story arc.

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FINNISH FEAR

The third trend covered in today’s issue is the Reboot. Although down slightly compared to last year, it remains one of the most resilient trends in an era where everyone is far too risk-averse. In this case, we’re talking about one of the all-time TV classics, Fear Factor, which introduces our third ‘dark side’: fear, of course.

The iconic competition show premiered on NBC in 2001, but it is not originally an American format. It is actually based on the Dutch show Now or Neverland, created back in 1998 by Endemol for the now-defunct channel Veronica (which, incidentally, also aired the very first edition of Big Brother).

And now, after nearly 30 years of history and adaptations across 32 different countries, the format is making a comeback in Finland after a 17-year hiatus. Commissioned by Nelonen Media’s streamer Ruutu, this new local version—titled Pelkokerroin and produced by Banijay Finland—marks the format’s latest international revival.

Inspired by Endemol Shine North America’s recent version—the ratings hit Fear Factor: House of Fear, which has been confirmed for a second season on FOX—this reimagining introduces a high-stakes social experiment. Alongside confronting intense physical trials, contestants will live together under one roof, navigating shifting alliances, mind games, and mounting social pressure. In an environment where trust is fragile, fear itself becomes a powerful strategy. In the end, only one contestant will conquer their fears and walk away with €20,000.

Great respect for a true TV classic, but a few more original formats definitely wouldn’t hurt the industry...

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Bell Media-owned Canadian streaming service Crave has ordered a French-language adaptation of NBCUniversal-owned US comedy competition format House of Villains. The Quebecois edition, titled La Maison Des Vilains, is being produced by Montreal-based Productions J in collaboration with Bell Media. Filming is currently underway and the first episodes are set to debut on Crave on August 19.

• Prime Video has pulled back the curtain on the reality dating series Undercover Lover, which will be available on the global streamer later this summer.

  The show sees five couples taken to South Africa and separated from their partners. One of each pair then poses as single in an attempt to win €50,000, surrounded by attractive singles whose only mission is to expose them, all while their partners watch from a second villa. The series hails from Netherlands-based, Banijay Entertainment-owned label SimpelZodiak.

• Brazilian free-to-air broadcaster TV Globo is set to adapt BBC Studios’ hit format The Weakest Link, which will air as a segment within Em Família, the new Sunday afternoon variety show hosted by Eliana. The news was first reported by local newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, citing a commercial trade document sent to the advertising market on Monday the 16th.

  Globo has also secured the rights to adapt Banijay’s format Upside Down—which originally premiered in 2023 on the Dutch platform Videoland—similarly featuring it as a segment on Eliana’s Sunday program.

• Chilevisión prepares Fiebre de Canto (Singing Fever), a new prime-time entertainment show that will expand the Fiebre de Baile (Dancing Fever) IP, one of the channel’s most successful properties. The format will also be hosted by Diana Bolocco and will bring together a group of celebrities looking to discover and develop their vocal skills throughout the competition. The network teased that details regarding the cast and premiere date will be revealed soon.

• The hit Spanish true-crime podcast Criminopatía, hosted by Clara Tiscar, is set to be adapted into a documentary series by Netflix and You First Originals, the production arm of You First by Gersh. Production is already underway and will tackle some of the most harrowing cases in recent Spanish history, going “beyond the mystery” to explore violence, justice, and human behavior from a deep social and psychological perspective.

When thinking of unscripted content, the region of Belgium that immediately springs to mind is Flanders. According to the latest data presented by The Wit at the recently concluded Paris Unscripted Showcase (see the Formatbiz article here), Flemish Belgium currently holds the fifth position worldwide for unscripted format exports.

However, Walloon Belgium is also rich in compelling IP. A notable example is the eco-reality show La Yourte, which aired a few years ago on RTBF (Radio-télévision belge de la Communauté française). This past Saturday, June 6, the same broadcaster premiered Les Trésors de Wallonie: L’Aventure en Famille in prime time with the excellent share of 22,4%.

The format is a giant treasure hunt that takes four families on a journey to discover Walloon heritage. Aboard playfully revamped camper vans, these families travel the UNESCO Route, a cultural circuit crossing Belgium from west to east.

The kick-off takes place at the Antoing Eco-Park, where the initial objective is to identify—from among five colored keys—the one that opens the “WalloVan” (pictured). This fully equipped luxury van will take the ultimate winning family to various music, comedy, and street theater festivals across the region this summer, from Namur to Enghien, and through Chassepierre.

Finding the right key, however, is just the beginning. The families must hold onto it until the very end by winning host-led challenges and collecting as many clues as possible throughout the adventure.

Simple in its essence but visually stunning, the format is a classic example of an entertainment show built around domestic tourism. It is highly reminiscent of another hit from the francophone market: La Route des Coffres, which aired on the French channel M6.

Like its Belgian counterpart, the French format seamlessly blended gameplay with the promotion of local heritage. Pairs of contestants in customized camper vans traveled across France, solving riddles and completing challenges to find treasure chests hidden in historical, unusual, or particularly picturesque locations nationwide.

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INVESTIGATING IN HUNGARY

Hungarian free-to-air broadcaster TV2 has commissioned the Studio Lambert game show format The Hustler, distributed by All3Media. The upcoming series is set to launch under the title A Szemfényvesztő – Hazudj, ha tudsz! (literally: The Illusionist – Lie if you can!) and will be hosted by Hungarian actor László Jáksó.

Set in an atmospheric location, The Hustler is a high-stakes tactical game of deception and betrayal where all players are under suspicion and viewers at home play detective.

Contestants (five in the original US version broadcast by ABC) work together to answer trivia questions correctly to build a collective prize pot. However, one of the contestants — the Hustler — already knows all the answers. If the Hustler can keep their identity a secret, they win the entire cash prize; but if the remaining players work out who the Hustler is, they walk away with the money.

Each trivia question has a connection to the Hustler’s real life, gradually revealing clues about their identity. As the Hustler tries to steer the group toward the right answers while remaining undetected, the other contestants must unmask them while staying on their guard — especially since the Hustler anonymously eliminates two of them ahead of the final showdown.

The Hungarian version marks the format’s first international localization since its American debut. However, format enthusiasts might note that the core concept is nearly identical to Dirty Rotten Cheater, a 2003 game show that had both a US version (aired on PAX TV) and a British version (broadcast on BBC One and produced by Celador), alongside various global adaptations.

While The Hustler successfully modernizes the premise by introducing a biographical trivia element tied to the impostor — making it feel closer to a modern deductive party game — it is worth pointing out that the format’s engine (a quiz show where one contestant secretly holds the answers and must be unmasked) is the direct descendant of Dirty Rotten Cheater.

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DATING IN CHILE (AND BEYOND)

Let’s move over to Latin America now, and specifically to Chile—a country with a very rich tradition of television formats, even if they aren’t often in the global spotlight. A great opportunity to get to know this market better is now being provided by the reality-dating show ¿Volverías con tu ex? (‘Would you get back with your ex?’). Originally premiered in 2016, it is one of the most iconic original formats from the free-to-air channel Mega, owned by Megamedia.

Now, the brand-new version, ¿Volverías con tu ex? 2, will stream on Disney+ across Latin America and on Netflix in Spain, in addition to Megamedia’s local channels and its Mega Go platform. This strategic move opens up the original Chilean show to a much larger potential audience.

The format premiered on Monday, June 8 on Mega. Hours later, the content arrived on Netflix and Disney+, where a new prime-time episode will drop every day from Sunday to Thursday. The remaining spin-off content from the reality show will be distributed across the wider Megamedia ecosystem:

• Mega 1, Mega 2, and Mega Go: Will air the “Non-Stop” 24/7 live stream channel, extended prime-time episodes, and the talk show El Juicio (‘The Judgment’).

• Social Media Platforms: Will host reaction videos and shorts.

The core mechanic of the format revolves around a 24/7 lockdown where an international cast of ex-couples—both celebrities and everyday people—cohabitate in a specialized house. The participants face a dramatic choice structured around two main paths:

• Reconciliation: Confronting their unfinished business to give their past relationship another chance.

• New Temptations: Moving on completely by pursuing romance with other contestants in the house.

Throughout the season, they compete in intense physical and mental challenges that test their loyalties, determine who gains immunity, and ultimately dictate who gets eliminated.

We will see if this format, with its ambitious and multifaceted media architecture, will also conquer audiences outside of Chile.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Following two successful seasons, Dutch channel SBS6 has commissioned a third season of Talpa Studios’ The Know-It-All. In the format 22 celebrities head back to school for a fun, light-hearted and competitive quiz adventure. Set in a nostalgic elementary school complete with wooden desks, chalkboards and a strict-but-fair head teacher, contestants face a mix of clever word games, visual puzzles and larger-than-life challenges.

• The Circle, the format that ran for seven seasons on Netflix, has a surprising new home. Hulu has ordered a new version of the show, which comes from Studio Lambert and previously streamed on Netflix. It marks a surprising move by the Disney streamer.

• Mediaset España is preparing Got Talent: Fantasy League, the first international adaptation of NBC’s Got Talent spin-off, in which the show’s judges also compete against each other. The show, which premiered in the US in 2024, will be produced by Fremantle Spain. In Got Talent: Fantasy League, the judges not only evaluate the performances but also build their own teams of contestants by selecting artists who receive at least three favourable votes from the panel.

• Spanish public broadcaster RTVE announced the launch of La Cena de los Idiotas (The Dinner of Idiots), a new prime-time format for La 1 that will seek to encourage dialogue and reflection on current topical issues. Each week, the program will gather a group of well-known guests around a large dinner table to debate relevant events on the news and social agenda. According to RTVE, the goal is to demonstrate that it is possible to converse and confront ideas between people with differing opinions without resorting to confrontation or shouting.

• Spanish public broadcaster RTVE has also greenlit a local version of the musical game show Hitster, which will be produced by Fremantle España. The format is based on the musical trivia board game, and features two intergenerational teams facing off in a studio to arrange iconic songs according to their release year. The first to correctly place 10 hits advances to a final where they compete for a cash prize.

• Spanish broadcast group Atresmedia will premiere its adaptation of Japanese gameshow format Freeze, made by Fremantle, on laSexta this summer under the name Congelados. The original was developed by Japanese companies Fany Studio and Yoshimoto Kogyo for Prime Video and won the Best Comedy Format Award at Mipcom 2024. The same year, Fremantle acquired the global rights for its production. The format proposes a simple mechanic: contestants must remain completely immobile while being subjected to all kinds of stimuli, traps and unexpected situations designed to provoke a reaction.

• ZDF Studios is showcasing the format rights to Song Trip, a show that combines music, travel, and cultural exchange, which is returning for a second season on German public channel ZDF this summer. The series is produced by Content Laden, an affiliated company of ZDF Studios. It follows as popular artists travel to other countries to collaborate with local musicians. Performances are staged in natural settings and fuse the atmosphere of a live concert with the production values of a high-end concert.

• Claro video and Elefantec Global have adapted Can’t Stop Media’s format The A Talks in Mexico, marking its first version in Spanish-speaking Latin America.

  Originally premiered in France on France 2 as Les Rencontres du Papotin, the format was created by QUAD+TEN and Kiosco TV (part of the Elephant Group) and is distributed by Can’t Stop Media. In Mexico, the show will air under the title Mentes únicas and is set to premiere this Wednesday, June 10, on Claro video.

• In tandem with the NEM Dubrovnik market, which is currently underway and runs through June 11, Warner Bros. International Television Production (WBITVP) has secured a number of new format commissions across Central and Eastern Europe. Serbia’s Prva TV has commissioned a first season of the dating show The Bachelor, which sees an eligible man searching for love among a group of women who are all hoping to be chosen. Serbia becomes the 47th territory to pick up the format, with the local adaptation, produced by Emotion Productions, set to film later this month. Elsewhere in the region, Pro TV in Romania has commissioned a first season of Bachelor in Paradise, the spinoff series that sees participants from The Bachelor and The Bachelorette travel to an exotic setting where they live together and hope for another chance at love.

• Telefe and Disney+ announce the arrival of Popstars, the Banijay Entertainment musical format. As part of a strategic agreement between Telefe and Disney+, Popstars will air simultaneously on Telefe’s broadcast screen and on the streaming service. Following each broadcast, the episode will be available on Disney+ alongside Mucho más Popstars (Much More Popstars), exclusive content that will expand the audience experience with unique access to rehearsals, backstage footage, daily life in the house, never-before-seen moments, and exclusive material of the contestants.

By now, we have all come to accept that YouTube is evolving into the new mainstream TV—or at least a massive chunk of it. This transformation of Google’s platform is largely driven by a proliferation of genres that increasingly mirror traditional television. The twist? They are reimagined and filtered through the unique lenses of established creators who already boast massive, built-in fanbases.

Naturally, this strategic repositioning wouldn’t be complete without one of the most beloved and enduring unscripted genres: the cooking show. Two recent formats perfectly illustrate this trend.

The first is Sidemen Present: SideMenu, from the renowned British YouTube collective, The Sidemen. The show premieres on the MoreSidemen YouTube channel on June 18, with Prime Video exclusively dropping the second episode the very next day. The third episode lands on Prime Video on June 26, followed by the finale on July 3. Interestingly, episodes two, three, and four will hit MoreSidemen two weeks after their Prime Video debut. This “tactical alliance” between YouTube and major SVOD platforms—or even linear TV—is fast becoming a staple of the modern media landscape.

Format-wise, Sidemen Present: SideMenu sees the collective and various guest contestants tackling themed culinary challenges, complete with rotating teams, surprise twists, and rigorous judging from professional chefs and food experts.

The second format is Guy’s Feast Club, produced by Made In Network, which premieres on June 11 exclusively on Food Network’s YouTube channel. Here, the iconic American restaurateur, author, and TV presenter is on a mission to serve up epic food alongside unfiltered conversations with celebrities and influencers. In each episode, off-the-hook dishes pave the way for in-depth chats fueled by flavor, fun, and a healthy dash of competition.

As these examples highlight, while genre and format remain vital, the true critical success factor in this new television paradigm is the style and appeal of the creators. They now carry even more weight than in the traditional broadcasting era... but we will dive deeper into that topic in a future issue.

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YOUTUBE FACTUAL

And then, of course, there is factual programming: the quintessential flexible and targeted genre, perfectly suited to any platform. On YouTube, Creation Content has partnered with Passion Distribution and digital channel group UpStream Media on a new factual series, Most Wanted With Billy Billingham.

The 10 x 20-minute blue-light series follows the British former soldier, author, television personality, and security consultant—best known as the Chief Instructor on the Channel 4 series SAS: Who Dares Wins—as he embeds with police forces across the UK during high-risk operations targeting some of the country’s most wanted criminals.

Combining raw frontline action with Billingham’s expertise, the series offers a gripping, unfiltered look at modern policing, capturing not only the intensity of the manhunts but also the human stories behind them. Conceived as a digital-first production for UpStream Media’s Blue Light YouTube channel, the series will also feature on Billingham’s newly launched YouTube channel, managed by Creation.

Creating thematic channels around a specific talent (see, for example, Ant & Dec and Jimmy Carr, to stick to the UK) is, after all, a widespread trend to build a ‘critical mass’ of content. Otherwise, individual pieces risk getting lost in the vast sea of Google’s platform.

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SPANISH TUNNEL

And finally, a classic quiz show for a traditional broadcaster—which, it is worth remembering, still forms the backbone of our industry.

According to data presented by Geneva-based consultancy The Wit at the recently concluded Conecta Fiction & Entertainment, Spain closed the 2025-26 season as the world’s top buyer of unscripted formats. This impressive figure sharply contrasts with its export performance: during the same period, the country managed to create and sell just one format internationally.

Bucking this trend is the recent news that public broadcaster RTVE is preparing El túnel: Avanza y Gana (The Tunnel: Advance and Win). According to the network, this original prime-time game show mixes knowledge, strategy, speed, and excitement on a “spectacular set never before seen on television.”

Created by Eureka Studios, produced in collaboration with Fremantle Spain, and distributed globally by Fremantle, the show brings together a group of contestants who must advance through a tunnel by answering questions and winning elimination duels. To stay in the running and reach the final for a prize of up to €150,000, participants must constantly weigh when to take risks, how to strategize, and who to face.

With stunning staging and relentless tension that lasts until the very last second, El túnel: Avanza y Gana promises to transform every duel into a true battle of nerves, testing not just the contestants’ trivia skills, but their psychological endurance.

The concept is undoubtedly intriguing, and it remains to be seen if these ambitious premises will translate to the screen.

For Spanish readers eager to participate, casting is now open at: www.rtve.es/castingeltunel.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• London-based TV format distribution company Can’t Stop Media has secured the exclusive global distribution rights (excluding the UK) to the hit factual entertainment format Pilgrimage. Originally produced by Manchester-headquartered prodco CTVC, the series has been a ratings winner and a staple of BBC Two’s primetime schedule since its debut in 2018. The format follows a group of celebrities from different backgrounds, each with their own faiths, beliefs and world views, as they forego modern luxuries and set off on a physically demanding and emotional journey along ancient pilgrimage routes.

• TelevisaUnivision is gearing up for the premiere of ¿Quién es mejor? (Who Is Better?), a new original talent show produced in-house by Miguel Ángel Fox. The format will debut on Sunday, June 7, airing in prime time on Las Estrellas in Mexico and streaming on ViX. The comedy reality series brings together contestants showcasing “unusual and impressive” skills across every possible category, ranging “from the artistic to the bizarre, surprising, and hilarious.”

• Banijay Rights has announced the first international deal for its comedy game show format Let’s Play Ball with Bell Media’s Crave streaming platform for French-speaking Canada. Originally co-developed by Banijay Benelux label EndemolShine Nederland, Talpa Studios and Signal.Stream, the format sees two teams go head-to-head in a race to transport a massive colored ball across a series of difficult terrains, from city streets to rivers. The 10 x 60-minute French-Canadian adaptation will be produced by Sphere Media. The original was first piloted on YouTube via StukTV, where it drew more than 1.2 million views. It was then produced by EndemolShine Nederland and Signal.Stream for SBS6, with a second season set to air this summer.

• Floresta, the Brazilian production company owned by Sony Pictures Television (SPT), is preparing a new slate of projects to capitalize on what it considers a growing demand for original business and game show formats in Brazil. During the LA Screenings, the production company presented Pitch Against the Clock, a race-against-time entrepreneurship format, to Latin American buyers.

  The premise follows first-time entrepreneurs who must track down high-profile investors in various parts of the city and pitch their projects to them before time runs out. The Brazilian production company is also working on The Web, an original game show where six contestants must combine knowledge, strategy, and luck to win a cash prize by answering trivia questions—although they can never do so individually. To participate in each round, contestants must form a “web” of two or more players, who then share the money if they answer correctly.

MICROFORMATS: Why unscripted is the next play in vertical video

by Beatrice Rossmanith - Mothership Media Consultancy

The buzz around microdrama has been steadily growing these past few months. However, attention is also shifting towards the potential to leverage the power of microseries in the unscripted space.

Peacock is preparing to launch original Bravo vertical series designed specifically for mobile viewing. One, Salon Confessionals with Madison LeCroy, follows the Southern Charm star as clients reveal messy personal stories while getting makeovers. Another, Campus Confidential: Miami, follows a group of college students including Georgia Gay, daughter of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Heather Gay.

These are not simply chopped-up reality clips repackaged for social media; they are short-form unscripted concepts built specifically for the vertical mobile environment.

That came after Peacock first tested audience appetite by licensing ten ReelShort titles. Now Peacock will test whether the fast emotional engine that powers short-form drama apps can be applied to reality IP: big personalities, immediate jeopardy, cliff-hangers, fandom, and a next-episode urge strong enough to keep someone in the app. The question of what a phone-native unscripted format looks like is now one of the most important ones facing the formats business.

Mobile v Television

In the same way microdrama isn’t longform hacked into short bites, vertical unscripted shouldn’t be understood as TV made smaller. It sits in the same competition set as social feeds, creator content, chat, shopping, gaming and habit itself.

Microdrama has understood that point very well. It meets the viewer in the right moment. The numbers speak for themselves. Sensor Tower data shows short-drama app viewing time grew by 311% year-on-year by Q4 2025. The category’s share of total mobile video entertainment time jumped from under 1% in early 2024 to over 10% by the end of 2025. Downloads reached roughly 2.3 billion globally in 2025, and Q4 downloads grew 186% year-on-year, allowing short-drama apps to overtake traditional OTT streaming app downloads.

The money is following. Omdia has estimated global microdrama revenues at around $11bn in 2025, growing to roughly $14bn by the end of 2026. ReelShort is estimated to have generated around $1.2bn in consumer spend in 2025, while DramaBox reportedly reached around $276m.

These companies are also spending huge amounts on marketing. In mobile entertainment, the cost of finding and keeping users can be enormous. So, this goes beyond creator experimentation and is starting to behave like a serious mobile entertainment industry.

Microdrama is not just short. It is designed to be addictive

This is the part traditional TV still tends to underestimate.

There’s more to microdramas than being short and punchy; beyond the catchy tropes at the heart of their narrative engine, they are built around continuation, which in turn sits at the core of their success.

Every element is designed to keep the viewer moving: rapid cliff-hangers, constant escalation, minimal downtime, frictionless autoplay and emotional payoffs every minute or two. In the more advanced app environments, data and AI tools are used to understand where viewers drop off, which dramatic reveals drive payment, and where the cliff-hanger should sit. The story and the business model are completely braided together.

How about unscripted? Can the same habit-forming mechanics work outside scripted melodrama?

Reality and factual entertainment already contain many of the ingredients that make microdrama work: elimination, transformation, jealousy, fandom, confession, competition, embarrassment, shock, humour and social participation. Those are the engine of the reality genre.

The audience is not who many people think it is

However, a misconception is that microdrama is mainly a Gen Z trend. Digital-i analysis of YouTube viewing, which I first quoted at Series Mania, found that women aged 35 to 44 represent around 11% of total YouTube viewing but more than 20% of microdrama streams. Women aged 45 to 54 also strongly over-index. Men under-index almost across the board. It is becoming a habitual emotional entertainment format for older millennial women and Gen X women too.

It’s a guilty pleasure and guilty pleasures are often where some of the most reliable viewing habits live. Daytime soaps knew that. Telenovelas knew that (and it’s surely not a coincidence if territories with a strong tradition in both tend to be strong microdrama adopters). Reality TV knows that as well. A female-skewing audience has always been the commercial centre of gravity.

Why unscripted may fit the phone better than people think

Scripted microdrama has proved that audiences will watch in bursts if every episode gives them one clean emotional hit and a reason to continue. In many ways, unscripted should be even better suited to the phone. First, it can be cheaper and faster. Deadline reported earlier this year that Yoav Gross Productions’ AppReel was preparing shows at budgets of roughly $25,000 to $30,000 per show. Most importantly, the platform is expanding beyond romance melodrama into formats like Survivors of the Heart, a Robinson Crusoe-inspired reality concept.

Second, unscripted already comes with built-in audience participation. ReelShort’s The Next ReelStar (pic) asks contestants to compete for a breakout lead role, with the audience helping decide who wins and who goes home. It’s short, but it is essentially a format built around a tried-and-tested formula: backing favourites, arguing, voting and coming back. The setup has to be understood instantly but still needs stakes, pace and payoff.

The TikTok problem

There is one big caveat. At the moment, unscripted formats designed specifically for social video platforms tend to work best as standalone episodes. Each episode corresponds to a single satisfying beat, mainly because TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are brilliant at discovery, but they are not always great at helping audiences follow a serialised story- which was a point discussed earlier last week at Berlin’s Re:publica festival (pic) where I shared a panel with Kai Fischer of Constantin Media and Henriette Lippold of UFA.

TikTok is built for surprise, speed and endless scrolling. It is very good at asking ‘what will make someone watch the next clip?’ but serialised content focuses on what will make someone come back to the same story tomorrow (or in 5 minutes). That requires order and continuity as well as optimised episode discovery. A way of finding part one, part seven and part twelve without friction, which is unfortunately still not where social platforms are strongest.

So, I would separate two things: Social platforms are excellent shop windows. They are where audiences can discover a character, a situation, a conflict or a world, but if the goal is a truly serialised unscripted format - especially one designed to make money directly from repeat viewing - then the best home is probably an app or platform environment built for continuation.

That could be a dedicated vertical drama app or a streamer’s mobile section. It could also be a broadcaster app. It could be a membership community around a creator-led format. Whatever it is though, it needs to make the next episode easy to find, easy to watch and, if appropriate, easy to pay for.

A good early unscripted example is Tattle TV’s Dog Dates, which is essentially a Love Island-style dating format built around dog owners. Positioned as the first British dedicated vertical drama app, the company used TikTok heavily for discovery and audience-building but paired that with a gamified subscription model using ‘Tattle Coins,’ which allows viewers to remove ads and unlock additional content. This model shows how a microformat increasingly includes the behavioural system around the show as opposed to throwing a few clips onto TikTok and hoping the algorithm is kind.

Anyone developing for this space now must focus first and foremost on what the phone is uniquely good at. It’s good at proximity, confession and immediate reaction. It’s also a perfect device for voting, commenting and sharing. It’s already good at turning viewers into participants - and paid users.

Bravo moving into unscripted microseries tells us mobile-first storytelling is moving at the very least to the edge of the mainstream, but as the actual size of the opportunity remains hotly debated, a key question is the distinction between the format itself and the business model: what deserves to live as a standalone social clip, what needs the structure of an app, and what can travel from social feed to app to living room.

And crucially: what behaviour is this really tapping into? If microdrama has cracked one thing, it’s habit. Provided unscripted microformats can do the same, vertical reality may become much bigger than the industry currently expects.

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FUNNY NORWEGIAN GAME

We have spoken several times about Funny Games as one of the most successful trends of the past few seasons (see our 10+1 Global Format Trends report, free for all subscribers). The Norwegian format Ligaen (marketed internationally as The Comedy League), which debuted on commercial channel TV2 during the spring season, is a prime recent example.

Created by the production company Happy Sheriff, Ligaen is a comedy-sports hybrid. The format pits well-known comedians and entertainers against each other in a series of physically and mentally demanding—and often highly embarrassing—sporting challenges.

Instead of pure athletic prowess, the show focuses on showmanship, massive blunders, and unexpected triumphs as the cast competes to be crowned the “most memorable athlete.” The Norwegian version is hosted by Jon Martin Henriksen and features a recurring cast of local talent, including Helene Olafsen, Morten Ramm, Jenny Skavlan, Truls Svendsen, and Tete Lidbom.

The first season performed very well: it ranked as the second-most watched program on TV2 during its broadcast window (though the exact share percentages are kept close to the vest by the network). As a testament to its success, Banijay Entertainment recently acquired the global rights, positioning it as a cost-effective physical competition driven by comedic personalities.

Funny games, but also serious business.

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THE STRANGE—AND CONTROVERSIAL—CASE OF PASAPALABRA

The long-running legal saga surrounding the hit Spanish game show Pasapalabra and its even more famous final round, El Rosco, finally reached a dramatic and expensive conclusion in May 2026 with two major, intertwined rulings.

First, the Madrid Provincial Court ordered Mediaset España to pay UK broadcaster and producer ITV Studios €73.2 million in damages. The court ruled that Mediaset illegally exploited the Pasapalabra format (originally an adaptation of ITV’s 1990s show The Alphabet Game) without a valid license between 2012 and 2019, the year Spain’s Supreme Court forced the broadcaster to pull the show from its schedules.

The compensation was drastically increased from an initial €44.3 million because the court agreed to charge Mediaset for indirect advertising revenue. This included the “spillover effect”—meaning Mediaset had to pay for the massive audience Pasapalabra gathered that subsequently stayed tuned in for the programs broadcast immediately afterward.

Second, in a separate but closely related ruling, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that the intellectual property rights to the show’s iconic final round, El Rosco (considered the most emblematic and highest audience-impact element of the format), do not belong to ITV. Instead, the format is owned by the Dutch production company MC&F Broadcasting Production and Distribution.

These rulings have immediate implications for Spanish broadcaster Atresmedia, whose network Antena 3 currently airs Pasapalabra. The Supreme Court confirmed that Antena 3 cannot continue exploiting El Rosco without securing the appropriate licensing rights from MC&F.

There will certainly be new twists in the story. MediaForEurope (MFE), the parent company of Mediaset España, has already stated it will seek to annul the €73.2 million enforcement proceeding. MFE’s legal argument is that the Supreme Court ruling inherently changes the legal basis used to assess damages, as the original fine assumed El Rosco was part of ITV’s format rights.

Ultimately, however, the most intriguing footnote to this legal saga might just be what remains unsaid about the true creative genesis of El Rosco. But this is neither the time nor the place to unpack the untold side of television’s most contested endgame; for now, it simply remains one of the most thorny and controversial affairs in recent television history.

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NEWS IN A NUSHELL

• The Spanish public broadcaster RTVE has given the green light to El Túnel: Avanza y Gana, a new prime-time game show produced by Fremantle Spain. We will discuss it in more detail in the next issue.

• Netflix has reached an agreement in Spain with public broadcaster RTVE to add episodes of the daily talk and comedy show La Revuelta to its catalog, which will be available on the platform the day after their broadcast on free-to-air TV.

• RTVE commissioned Warner Bros. International TV Production (WBITVP) Spain for a local version of the British format Inside Therapy, which will be titled Terapia Abierta. The new factual program will open the doors to real psychological therapy sessions, showcasing the work of therapists and patients in consultations recorded with consent and within a “controlled, supervised, and safe” environment, according to the public broadcaster.

• Channel 4 has unveiled the four-part competition series Ingenious, hosted by comedian and musician Bill Bailey. Hailing from Curve Wales, Ingenious sees Bailey bringing together creative inventors from across the UK to a large industrial space to build contraptions designed to solve everyday problems. The series features contestants competing in a range of imaginative invention challenges that put their creativity, resourcefulness and mechanical know-how to the test, all in pursuit of being crowned Britain’s best home inventor.

• Dutch streamer NPO Start, part of public broadcaster NPO, is preparing a local adaptation of reality format First Dates Beach Club, marking the first international version of the show. Produced by Warner Bros International Television Production (WBITVP) Netherlands and NPO’s local network BNNVARA, the series comes after 16 Dutch seasons of the original First Dates format. Originally created by Twenty Twenty for Channel 4 in the UK, First Dates sees singles paired up for dates at a restaurant. First Dates Beach Club follows the same premise but is set in a beach club in Spain. The UK beach club spin-off aired on Channel 4 late last year and early this year.

• U.K. factual outfit Zinc Media Group has been commissioned to reinvent and produce season 18 of the QatarFoundation’s educational reality TV show Stars of Science in a $6 million deal that marks Zinc’s first major entertainment commission in the Middle East. Stars of Science, which features Arab innovators and entrepreneurs looking to transform their ideas into inventions with the guidance of experts, is among the longest-running entertainment formats across the Arab world and the wider Arab diaspora.

• Belgrade-based prodco Rainmaker Productions is to film the first two seasons of the Serbian-language adaptation of The Traitors back-to-back for commercial free-to-air network Prva TV. Rainmaker claims it is the first outfit to produce the hit format in this way for the same territory. UK, US and celebrity versions of The Traitors are all filmed consecutively in the Scottish Highlands.

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Channel 4.0—the YouTube network managed by British public broadcaster Channel 4—was launched in October 2022. Even though it was not the first YouTube venture owned by a traditional broadcaster (following BBC Three’s ‘experiment’ in 2016), it has stood out over the years for its innovation and ability to tap into new trends.

Aimed at a younger demographic, its original programmes are developed by professional creators linked to the network. These shows are posted exclusively across dozens of dedicated, globally accessible YouTube channels collectively known as Channel 4.0.

Crucially, this strategy did not result in audience cannibalisation. Instead, it engaged a demographic previously disconnected from traditional television, attracting new viewers and generating additional revenue for the group without impacting the main linear channel.

Formats like Don’t Get Catfished, The Infiltrators, and Tapped Out have been highly successful, catching the attention of the international markets (the global rights for The Infiltrators, for instance, were recently picked up by Banijay Entertainment).

Continuing this momentum, the network has just commissioned Random or Related?—an original format produced by Acclaimed Content. In this social experiment-meets-game show, a familiar face from Channel 4.0 is introduced to a group of strangers, among whom hides a genuine distant relative they have never met.

Through several rounds of questioning, the protagonist must weed out the fakes by analyzing cultural similarities, shared traits, and the impostors’ ability to bluff, all while the strangers try to prove they are the real relative.

By mixing classic TV mechanics and genres with a fresh, YouTube-native flavour, Channel 4.0 aims to become the definitive ‘mainstream TV’ destination for Gen Z—or at the very least, a major player in the space.

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CARDS ON YOUTUBE

Being on a YouTube channel like Channel 4.0 (and many others) is a bit like operating within a ‘protected space.’ Tackling Google’s platform ‘solo’—meaning outside of a branded space—is like tossing a message in a bottle into the ocean, hoping someone spots it: it is a challenge worth taking on only if you already have a strong, loyal community following you (and even then, it is far from easy).

This is the challenge that Shadow Lion, the award-winning, full-service creative agency, is currently taking on with Chasers. Launched last Wednesday on YouTube for a biweekly run, the initial premiere will be followed by 90-second episode cutdowns on Instagram and TikTok.

Here’s how the digital series is described: “In each episode, a different celebrity guest attempts to answer trivia questions to identify cards that are in some way related to their lives. Someone from their hometown, a player they share a record with, or maybe just an unknown obsession or skill. Each card starts a new topic of conversation, and correct answers reveal a card to win a guess in the final round.”

It is a very basic concept, but in this space, the tone and style (of both the host and the participants) count almost more than the format itself.

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2 PHYSICAL SHOWS FOR NETFLIX

With the rise of AVoD—YouTube first and foremost, but not exclusively—traditional SVoD services—Netflix first and foremost, but not exclusively—are moving more and more toward the center of the new media space, shifting their profile from “pioneers of the new television” to the “new television mainstream.” For this reason, they are offering increasingly classic genres (quizzes, game shows) and fairly standard, uninnovative content, albeit with high production value.

This is precisely the case with the two “survivor / competition shows” announced recently.

The first is Outlast: The Jungle. Produced by Aggregate Films and BBC Studios, this grueling format drops 16 strangers into the unforgiving Panamanian jungle, forcing them to survive in teams. Participants must navigate scarce resources, brutal environments, and shifting alliances, all while facing the constant threat of being cast out by their own peers.

With a massive $1 million grand prize on the line, the show transforms survival into a psychological chess match where endurance is nothing without strategy—and where no one can win alone.

The second is the Swedish adaptation of the South Korean format Physical: 100, which has just entered production via Banijay Nordic’s Meter Entertainment. Originally created by MBC and producer Jang Ho-gi in 2023, this competition format has already spawned multiple local iterations, including an all-Asia edition.

Currently filming in Sandviken, Sweden, and slated for a 2027 Netflix premiere, Physical: 100 – Sweden is a massive casting feat. Producers vetted over 1,300 candidates across the country, conducting 450+ intensive interviews to select the final 100 contestants. Ranging in age from 20 to 57, the roster features elite competitors spanning martial arts, swimming, calisthenics, ice hockey, and wrestling. They will face a series of brutal, cinematic challenges designed to test the absolute limits of strength, endurance, teamwork, and mental resilience.

Ultimately, only one victor will walk away with the title and the grand prize of 1 million Swedish Kronor (just over €90,000).

Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of these brawn-over-brains spectacles. In my humble opinion, extreme tests of raw strength can feel a bit repetitive and samey. That said, from an industry perspective, one has to admire the sheer scale of production and showmanship on display, both of which make these shows highly appealing to a broad audience.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Netflix has also acquired the global streaming rights to Japanese broadcaster Nippon TV’s long-running variety series Monday Late Show (Getsuyo kara Yofukashi). Monday Late Show is in its 15th year on air on Nippon TV, airing every Monday at 22.00. The series dissects public street interviews on trending local topics across Japan but, according to Nippon TV, has cultivated a notable international following.

• The Chilean public channel TVN acquired the adaptation rights for the Banijay format MasterChef. The announcement was made this Friday by the channel itself after closing an agreement with Banijay Rights, the global distribution arm of the media and entertainment giant Banijay Entertainment. The acquisition will mark the return of the format to Chile, where it had four seasons on Canal 13. The last one aired in 2019.

Among the latest industry trends, Love Beyond Boundaries stands out as one of the most innovative and original. Not long ago, TV dating shows followed a rigid template: photogenic young singles chasing a fairy-tale ending.

But the landscape has shifted. What started as a slow burn has evolved into a full-scale transformation, with dating shows now embracing the full spectrum of human connection. We’ve seen senior romance (Hotel Römantiek), LGBTQ+ specific formats (I Kissed a Boy, I Kissed a Girl), and the rise of polyamory on screen (Couple To Throuple, This Is Poly…), among others. And now, in a first for the genre as far as I’m aware, the spotlight is turning toward love among the widowed.

Heel Mijn Hart (All My Heart), the new program hosted by Ruth Beeckmans, has been available to stream on the Belgian commercial platform VTM GO+ since May 11th (it will also air on the linear channel in a slot yet to be determined, likely after the summer).

The presenter, who lost her partner Gary—the love of her life—draws from her own experience to help five others who have suffered similar losses open their hearts to love once again. In this moving format, Tom, Isabelle, Elke, Gilles, and Jozefien are given the opportunity to go on three different dates. Following a restorative holiday in South Africa (Gary’s home country), the participants embark on a romantic weekend with their favorite match to discover what the future might hold.

The producer, Roses Are Blue — specialized in sensitive themes (The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes - dementia; Down The Road - Down syndrome; Nothing to See - blindness and visual impairment; Wildlife - psychological vulnerabilities) — perfectly balances every nuance of this delicate program.

A new piece has been added to the complex mosaic of human love.

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NOSTALGIA FOR… OLD GAME

The Nostalgia Show trend, which represents one of the core elements of first ‘circle of new television’ analyzed in our last issue, takes several forms. Some formats evoke the ‘good old days’ through music—such as the Dutch Play That Song Again or the Canadian Karaoké Club—while others draw inspiration from classic games we played as children, such as the French Bataille Navale (Battleship).

A recent example of this latter category is The House of Hide & Seek, a format by Talpa Studios (together with David Grifhorst and FOX Entertainment Studios). It premiered on May 9th on RTL 4 in the Netherlands, in conjunction with the Videoland platform. Additionally, the Spanish public broadcaster RTVE has already commissioned a local version titled El Escondite.

Inspired by the classic game of hide and seek (the ultimate ‘nostalgia effect’), the show brings this concept into a studio environment where contestants hide, hunt, and outsmart each other across a purpose-built set. In The House of Hide & Seek, contestants face a series of tense and entertaining rounds, culminating in a high-stakes finale—all set inside a gigantic two-story house with more than 120 hiding spots.

The full-scale, purpose-built studio transforms the childhood game into a television spectacle. From the grand staircase to the kitchen, bedrooms, and living room, every corner is designed to draw players deeper into the game, keeping them in constant movement. Secret passages, unexpected doors, and cleverly hidden spots give the house an ‘escape-room’ thrill, sparking a sense of childhood wonder from the moment the contestants step inside.

It is worth noting that The House of Hide & Seek is not the only format based on this game. Last January, Banijay Entertainment acquired the option rights for All Star Hide & Seek across all Banijay territories. This digital-first, unscripted format is produced by Troot Finland and distributed by Rabbit International.

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GOOD, OLD QUIZ SHOWS

Staying within the first of the ‘three circles of television’—the most traditional and reassuring one—one cannot fail to mention quiz shows. They have been a backbone of television since its inception (across all territories) and are currently experiencing a second youth.

This is evidenced by several news items from this week, which can be summarized as follows:

ITV has commissioned The Golden Elevators, produced by All3Media-owned Studio Lambert and John De Mol’s Talpa Studios (the format will be produced at Talpa’s international production hub in Belgium). Set in the lobby of a skyscraper, the series presents 10 contestants with questions featuring two possible answers, each represented by an elevator. Before the doors close, players can confer, debate, persuade, or mislead one another. Stepping into the correct elevator moves a player closer to the top—and the cash prize—while the wrong one sends them back to the lobby and out of the game. The jackpot is shared by every player who reaches the penthouse.

ITV has also struck a three-year deal with BBC Studios-owned producer Magnum Media for The 1% Club, one of the most successful new quiz formats of recent years. The deal ensures further seasons and specials over the next three years, alongside the return of The 1% Club Rollover later this year and The 1% Club Kids Special, due to air later this month.

Across the Atlantic, US broadcast network NBC has greenlit a new game show based on the online word game Wordle (launched in 2021 and acquired by The New York Times in 2022). Produced by Universal Television Alternative Studio in association with Jimmy Fallon’s Electric Hot Dog and The New York Times, the primetime format will challenge players to solve five-letter word puzzles in a battle of speed and wit (N.B. Word games aren’t strictly quiz shows, but they follow the same principles, making them a very close match ;)

Finally, Secret Genius, which premiered on Channel 4 on February 1st and was recently renewed for a second series, could also be considered a quiz show—or at least an extension of the genre—despite being marketed as an ‘intelligence-focused format’ (?). Hosted by Alan Carr and lexicographer Susie Dent, the show aims to uncover the hidden potential of ordinary people with extraordinary minds. The format sees participants from all walks of life take on immersive challenges based on the tests used by Mensa to measure IQ.

Ultimately, quiz shows continue to evolve and reinvent themselves, as is only right, but at the end of the day, luckily, they always remain true to their core.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• The Spanish media group Atresmedia has begun filming Noche en familia, the Spanish adaptation of Parents’ Evening, the ITV Studios game show. The format will air on Antena 3 during prime time Produced by Atresmedia in collaboration with ITV Studios Iberia, the show’s mechanics revolve around a simple premise: more important than the correct answers themselves is how much the family members believe the contestants know. Before each round, parents or children must bet on how many questions their relative will answer correctly, putting both their knowledge and their intergenerational connection to the test.

• EndemolShine Boomdog, part of Banijay Americas, has announced the premiere of MasterChef 24/7 in Mexico, marking the first live, 24/7 version of the format in the history of the Banijay Entertainment culinary competition franchise. Airing on TV Azteca in Mexico, MasterChef México 24/7 will see contestants for the first time live, train and compete under one roof in what Banijay calls a “purpose-built environment” designed to accentuate technique, mentorship and professional development.

• Primitives, the Belgium-headquartered TV formats distributor has announced that FOX has officially renewed the hit competition format 99 to Beat for a second season, following the success of its debut season last year.

• WBD to localise 100 Cooks across global footprint US version of upcoming culinary format to be dubbed and subtitled for HBO Max, Discovery+ and networks

• Canadian broadcast and media company Rogers Sports & Media has commissioned an adaptation of the long-running series Deadliest Catch as a Canadian original for its Discovery channel. Deadliest Catch: Northern Edge is produced by Montreal’s Attraction and Fremantle-owned prodco Original Productions in association with Discovery U.S. The Canadian adaptation follows a new cast of captains in the North Atlantic as they navigate treacherous waters on their fishing expeditions.

• Japanese broadcaster TV Asahi is launching an unscripted format titled DUAL² on the international market ahead of its debut in Japan this week. Described as a “next-generation survival competition format,” the 8×30′ series premieres on May 17 on TV Asahi’s terrestrial channel and will also be available on SVoD platform TELASA and on catch-up service TVer. The series merges athletic challenges with strategic gameplay and “constant psychological tension,” according to TV Asahi.

To navigate the complex global TV landscape, it is useful to adopt a Three-Circle Strategy —a simplification designed to better understand the industry’s profound transformation. This model suggests that traditional broadcasters must tailor their programming to - at least - three distinct audience segments to remain competitive.

The first circle focuses on “Content for Boomers”—viewers who grew up with linear television and remain deeply attached to traditional viewing habits. This demographic drives trends such as Nostalgia Shows (see our 10+1 Global Format Trends 2025 free report) and, of course, Reboots, which revive successful legacy formats after a long (or not-so-long) hiatus.

A prime example of this trend is Name That Tune, the iconic music game show. It premiered on the NBC Radio Network in 1952, moving to television on the same network in 1953 while continuing its radio run until 1954. In the UK, it originally aired on ITV from 1976 to 1987 (pictured), followed by a brief two-season revival on Channel 5 in 1997 and 1998.

After several other iterations—too many to summarize here—ITV has decided to revive the show once again, much to the delight of its fans. It’s also worth noting that the format has recently seen a successful high-profile revival in the US as well.

A staple of the ‘70s and ‘80s, the series pits contestants against each other to test their musical knowledge. Across several rounds, the show features hits from beloved artists of all genres, culminating in a high-stakes finale.

The second circle focuses on “Content for Millennials”—an audience that remains loyal to traditional TV (linear and major SVOD) but enjoys a broader media diet and has a keen interest in fresh concepts.

For this demographic, formats are often modern evolutions of classic shows, updated with a more dynamic and intriguing feel. Key trends in this space include Love Beyond Boundaries (see our last article) and Psycho Formats —shows with a psychological twist, such as unmasking traitors, identifying saboteurs, or discovering who holds the real power and money.

A prime example of this trend is Nobody’s Fool, a brand-new hybrid strategy-reality show again from ITV. Officially described as a “fiendish competition” with a “big twist,” the series follows 10 contestants living together in a ‘Smart House.’

The catch? Their fate isn’t decided by how intelligent they actually are, but by how smart their rivals perceive them to be. Players must compete in challenges to convince their peers of their brilliance, all while taking daily quizzes to build a collective prize pot.

Watch the first trailer below:

Finally, the third circle is “Content for Gen Z (and Alpha).” In this case, the break from traditional linear TV is both clear and irreversible. Interconnected phenomena such as the digital shift and the creator economy are profoundly reshaping today’s media landscape, giving rise to new types of content like that featured in the article below.

Naturally, traditional broadcasters—or at least the most forward-thinking among them—are moving in this direction as well, alongside the two strategies mentioned earlier. By bolstering their BVoD platforms, launching YouTube channels, and finding new ways to adapt, they are preparing for what’s next.

The future of media will undoubtedly be challenging, but it will also be incredibly exciting and highly innovative.

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REALITY GOES VERTICAL

We have covered Microdramas and Vertical Content several times in this newsletter—essentially “TV-like” content designed to be consumed “on the go”. As it is well known, this phenomenon originated in China (and to an extent, South Korea) under the name Duanju, where it immediately generated massive engagement and exponential growth.

At first—let’s be honest—most of us (myself included) viewed it as a primarily local trend, though “local” is quite an understatement when referring to the scale of the Chinese and East Asian markets. However, the phenomenon soon exploded along two distinct paths.

1. Geographical Expansion. The trend traveled through Latin America and Spain, where these stories were “Westernized,” before spreading globally at an impressive speed. Major industry players have taken note: Fox, Banijay, and Disney+ are all finding ways to ride this wave (which, truth be told, feels more like a tsunami). Even Netflix is redesigning its mobile experience by introducing Clips, a vertical video feed designed to help users discover new content.

2. Genre Evolution. While early vertical content was almost exclusively scripted, it is now diversifying into unscripted formats. A few issues ago, we explored “Vertical Dating”. Today, we are looking at a Vertical reality show—the first of its kind I’ve come across (though given the volume of content out there, I may have missed others!).

Kwai, the Brazilian vertical video platform owned by China’s Kuaishou (no coincidence there), has announced the launch of its first-ever mobile-exclusive reality show. Produced by Clube Filmes, the series, titled Casa do Kwai, is set to premiere on May 5.

Hosted by journalist Luigi Civalli, the show features a cast that blends traditional TV stars with digital-native talent, including several alumni from Big Brother Brasil (BBB) alongside popular influencers. Filmed in rural São Paulo, participants must earn points through physical trials and social strategy. The ultimate goal? A grand prize of R$ 50,000 (approximately US$ 10,000). The Grand Finale will be streamed live on June 2.

One thing is certain: vertical content is here to stay, even in the unscripted world. We’ll be tracking this space for a long time to come.

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THE POLY TREND

As mentioned above, the Love Beyond Boundaries trend (see our 10+1 Global Formats Trends in 2025 free report) is one of the most effective ways to engage the ‘middle circle’ of viewers—those who remain loyal to traditional television but are looking for fresher, more modern, and less conventional content.

In essence, this trend encompasses dating shows 2.0—programs that explore love in all its nuances without limits or filters, often in ways that are provocative or unconventional by traditional standards.

Within this space, the ‘polyamorous dating’ sub-genre is gaining significant traction, having been pioneered two years ago by Couple To Throuple (Peacock, 2024). Now, the AMC-owned network WE tv is set to launch This is Poly, an unscripted series exploring modern polyamorous relationships. Premiering on May 29, the show will also be available to stream on AMC Networks’ All Reality.

The eight-episode series offers a first-of-its-kind look at the world of polyamory, following five diverse ‘polycules’—interconnected groups of people in polyamorous relationships. As they build lives and families outside traditional norms, the series dives into the emotional realities of jealousy, commitment, and trust, redefining what it means to be a family.

Love comes in many forms, and next-generation dating shows are exploring them all through innovative formats tailored to a modern audience.”

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• A decade after the premiere of its first edition, the MasterChef Celebrity format returns with a special spin-off. RTVE, in collaboration with Shine Iberia, began filming MasterChef Celebrity Legends this Monday—a new installment that will reunite 15 iconic contestants from previous seasons as they vie for a second shot at the trophy. This special edition bets on the return of the format’s most memorable figures, cementing the brand’s status as a powerhouse in Spain’s free-to-air entertainment landscape.

• Talpa Studios’ format The Floor has been renewed for a third season on Spanish public broadcaster RTVE, this time produced under the Stratos Studios label.

• Atresmedia, in collaboration with Warner Bros. ITVP Spain, is preparing a new season of El Círculo de los Famosos, the local adaptation of The Wheel format, three years after its 2023 debut on Antena 3. The new installment will maintain the original mechanics: each episode features seven celebrities—each an expert in a specific category—who assist civilian contestants in answering questions to compete for the grand prize.

• Spanish regional broadcaster Telemadrid has commissioned Globomedia (The Mediapro Studio) to produce a local adaptation of Keshet International’s Israeli format The Search. Titled locally as Sopa de Letras (Word Search), the game show transforms the traditional word search puzzle into a physical competition. Contestants will be challenged to put their knowledge, speed, cognitive skills, and teamwork to the test.

• Norway’s Seefood TV has announced new seasons for its Celebrity Task Force format in both Sweden and Poland. Sweden’s Kompani: Svan will return to Kanal 5 and HBO Max for a fifth season this fall from Strix Television, with Poland’s TTV also producing a fourth season of the format, known locally as Nasi w mundurach (pictured), for the fall. The format sees celebrities invited to take part in a special military education. The upcoming Swedish season will see new military leaders guiding 10 celebrities while TTV’s latest edition of the format will feature an all-male cast. TTV has previously produced a celebrity version with both male and female candidates as well as a couples edition.

• US network Fox has commissioned a format based on arranged marriages, titled Marriage Market, for the 2026/27 broadcast season. Produced by Fox Entertainment Studios, the series is described as an “immersive matchmaking experience” in which families come together to help a single family member find a meaningful, lasting match. The show involves 100 single contestants, all putting their love lives in the hands of relatives.

• The original stars of The Real Housewives of New York City are set to return to television with The Golden Life. E! has released a first look teaser trailer for the new reality series, which is expected to premiere this fall.

• TelevisaUnivision is set to premiere Garra vs. Veneno: Guerreros Mundiales (Claw vs. Venom: World Warriors) on June 2. The show is an adaptation of the Peruvian format Esto Es Guerra (This is War), created by ProTV in Peru, which has aired for more than 20 seasons on América TV. The reality competition will debut with weekday airings from Monday to Friday on UniMás, while live prime-time galas will air on Univision on Sundays. Additionally, episodes will be available for streaming on ViX the day after their initial broadcast.

  The Lisbon cover photo in the last issue of Friday's Espresso was by Maria Chiara Duranti. We apologize to the author for failing to include the appropriate credit.

  

by Alexandra Heidrich – Format Acquisitions Consultant

“From April 21 to 23, 2026, the global content industry found a vibrant new home at the Marriott Hotel in Lisbon. The inaugural Content Europe market brought together major broadcasters, platforms, and studios to dissect the trends and challenges of an industry in transformation. While the event was designed as a broad sales and acquisitions marketplace for formats, factual, and kids’ content, it was the undeniable “buzz” from the format community that stole the show.

The market opened with a professional flourish as Margarida Balseiro Lopes, Portugal’s Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, delivered opening remarks that highlighted the growing importance of national ecosystems in the global economy. This set the stage for a dense, three-track conference program: the Format Futures Forum, the Content Acquisitions Summit, and the Kids Content Summit.

The sessions were a “who’s who” of industry leadership. Peter van der Vorst (DPG Media) and Ella Umansky (ITV Studios) shared insights on scaling IP like The Traitors and Love Island in a landscape of tighter budgets and shifting audience behaviors. A particularly popular session, “How to Build a Global Hit Franchise,” examined the mechanics of market-by-market adaptation, while the “How to get your Show on…” sessions offered a rare look into the wish lists of buyers from Channel 4, ZDF, TF1, Mediaset, RTP, TG4, Sanoma Media Finland, TV4, Keshet 12, WBD Nordics Platforms, TV2 and Nat Geo.

Technology and the younger demographic were also front and center. A masterclass on “Pitching in the AI Era” explored how artificial intelligence is already reshaping project presentations, while a dedicated panel discussed using AI across development and production to help get shows on air.

The Kids Content Summit addressed the “digital-first” reality, with executives from the BBC, YLE, and RTP discussing the challenges of fewer greenlights and the need for multiplatform brand expansion. It was clear that whether for adults or children, the focus has shifted toward scalable, adaptable IP that can navigate a fragmented media world.

The undisputed highlight of the week was the Global Formats Pitch Competition, held in partnership with Talpa Studios. In a highly competitive field of eight finalists, the French production company Wonder Circuit emerged victorious with their travel-competition format, Fluent in 40.

On a personal note, the atmosphere in Lisbon was a refreshing mix of high-level business and Mediterranean relaxation. The Marriott’s terrace and garden, bathed in sunshine, became a secondary boardroom where executives held meetings in lounge chairs by the pool. The “Format folks” in particular seemed energized, reporting a back-to-back meeting schedule that felt like the “old days” of MIPTV.

However, the experience wasn’t the same for everyone. Sellers focusing on fictional series noted lower foot traffic, likely because many drama buyers had prioritized Series Mania in Lille.

As the sun set, the networking moved from the hotel to the city. Although the Marriott is slightly outside the center, Lisbon’s affordable taxis made it easy to reach the city’s stunning restaurants for dinners with magnificent sea views. The social peak was the “Beers & Business” rooftop event on Wednesday, hosted by German-speaking distributors, where the industry’s veterans and newcomers toasted to new connections.

By the time the Wrap Session concluded on Thursday, the consensus was clear: Lisbon has successfully positioned itself as a key meeting point for the international content business. I, for one, have already marked my calendar for next year”

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FLUENT PITCH

As highlighted in Alexandra’s report, the Content Europe Global Entertainment Formats Pitch took center stage at the event. It revived a long-standing industry tradition that has recently been fading, amid the growing reluctance of broadcasters to bet on paper formats—especially those from small and mid-sized production companies.

As mentioned, the contest winner was the travel-competition format Fluent in 40, created by French prodco Wonder Circuit. The format features contestants dropped into France with one mission: to become as fluent as possible in the native tongue in just 40 days. They must face real-world challenges, such as working a shift in a busy café or performing at a karaoke night.

At the end of the 40 days, the contestant demonstrating the most significant transformation wins a cash prize and an extended stay in France, while weaker performers are eliminated throughout the season.

The competition focused on three key genres: primetime entertainment, reality/social experiment, and factual entertainment. The judging panel included industry leaders such as Jasper Hoogendoorn (Talpa Studios), Sumi Connock (BBC Studios), Niklas Vestberg (TV4), Nathalie Wogue (Wogue Entertainment), and Niklas Vargö (Warner Bros. Discovery).

The hope now is to see this paper format evolve into a full-fledged production—a transition that has been noticeably missing from most pitch contests at recent markets. With a prize of $20,000 in marketing support and a development deal with Talpa Studios, this win should provide the perfect opportunity to bring the project to life….

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THE BRUTAL NORTH

The trend of formats designed to “push participants beyond their limits” is a global phenomenon (see our 10+1 Global Formats Trends in 2025 free report). Camp North — currently airing in primetime on Nelonen Finland (original title: Suuri Seikkailu), produced by Fremantle Finland and distributed by independent distributor Rabbit Films — fits perfectly within this landscape, representing one of its most extreme examples.

This adventure reality format is set against the cinematic backdrop of Finnish Lapland. It follows 16 celebrities in a high-intensity competition that combines physical endurance, social strategy, and psychological gameplay in a demanding wilderness environment. Filmed over four weeks, the series sees contestants living in primitive conditions without modern comforts, relying on resilience, adaptability, and survival skills to stay in the game.

Originally launched in Finland in 2001, Camp North returned in 2024 as a major primetime event, re-establishing the brand as one of the country’s most recognizable adventure reality formats. Since its relaunch, two successful seasons have aired, both delivering solid performances in their timeslot and attracting a broad commercial audience. A third season is currently in post-production.

Camp North can be produced as a local adaptation or as a hub production in the stunning Finnish Lapland region, which has also hosted productions like Ultimate Escape and The Ultimate Expedition - two of my favorite formats of this trend, also produced by Rabbit Films.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• ITV has commissioned the golf-themed competition format Holey Moley for the UK as a four-part series, hosted by Ant & Dec. The format is coproduced by Fremantle-owned Talkback Thames and Mitre Studios. Each episode sees eight contestants made up of UK professional golfers and amateurs tackle a wild mini golf course filled with inventive obstacles and physical challenges in order to win the coveted golden putter, plaid jacket and prize.

• Prime Video has announced the cast and premiere for its new UK-based comedy reality series Would You Rather: Decide to Survive from Boldprint Studios.

  Hosted by Romesh Ranganathan and launching this June, the series will see two teams of some of Britain’s digital personalities compete in real-life challenges based on classic hypothetical decisions based on “Would You Rather?,” with those three words deciding everything from what they eat to who they send home.

• Atresmedia and Fremantle Spain have begun filming the Spanish adaptation of The Box. Locally titled La Caja Amarilla (The Yellow Box), the reality series will premiere on Antena 3. The Box is one of the breakout hits of recent years and the most widely adapted format released globally in 2025. In it, 12 stars from the worlds of television, sports, fashion, music, and social media, among other fields, must face a variety of challenges that remain unknown to them until the very last moment.

• All3 Media’s adventure game format The Unknown – To The Very Last Crossroads will be aired by Rai 2. The format is produced by Banijay Italia, in collaboration with Rai’s Prime Time Entertainment Department for Rai 2. Originally created by IDTV, part of All3Media, The Unknown – To The Very Last Crossroads, sees two teams of well-known personalities and non-celebrity contestants challenged to choose between the known and the unknown, with each decision carrying risk or reward. Throughout the competition, players navigate a series of unpredictable stages, where strategy, trust and instinct are key.

• Paramount Skydance-owned broadcaster 5 has unveiled the reality format Trading Places (w/t) from Orchard Studios. The series follows groups of three young people per episode as they are take out of their comfort zones for an immersive, week-long, 24/7 experience inside one a new world to find out if they have been missing out on aspects of life.

FUNNY NATION’S DUMBEST

Norges Dummeste (Norway’s Dumbest), which aired on the commercial broadcaster TV2 in August 2024, has quickly become a ratings hit. Produced by BBC Studios’ Norwegian arm, the show is a key example of the Funny Games trend (featured in our free 10+1 Global Formats Trends in 2025 free report).

In this format, twelve celebrities are tested on basic general knowledge through a series of funny physical and mental challenges, including practical tasks, logic puzzles, local proverbs and so on. The twist is that in each episode, the winner (the “smartest”) gets to go home. No one wants to win the overall competition, as the final contestant left receives the dubious title of “Norway’s Dumbest” ;)

The success of this humorous and ironical game show—which even featured a politician as particiapant in one edition—has led to several international adaptations. Versions have already been launched or announced for TV4 (Sweden), TF1 (France), ProSieben (Germany), Fox (US), and MTV3 (Finland)—the latter being the only version produced by Fremantle Media Finland instead of BBC Studios.

Now, Hungary and Denmark have joined the list. In Denmark, TV2 has ordered an eight-part series produced by BBC Studios Denmark Productions; the show has already been filmed and is set to air later this year. In Hungary, RTL is preparing its local version, with filming scheduled for late summer 2026.

The Funny Games genre is set to remain one of the most significant trends—not only within the game show category but across the entire industry—well into 2026.

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DANISH EDUCATIONAL GAME

On the other hand, there is another ‘classic’ trend that has been somewhat overlooked lately: Educational Games. These titles blend entertainment with informative elements. When executed well, the ‘learning’ aspect doesn’t weigh the format down; instead, it enriches it, making it a perfect fit for public broadcasters and beyond.

Unfortunately, the term ‘educational’ can sound a bit ‘dusty’ or dated, and it might seem like the opposite of the Funny Games trend mentioned earlier. This is a mistake. High-quality Educational Games are anything but boring—in fact, they are often quite the opposite.

A perfect example of this is History Hunters, a game show created by Heartland TV and distributed by Primitives. Following a strong debut on DR1 in November 2025, it has already been recommissioned for a second season by the Danish public broadcaster, DR.

History Hunters turns a nation’s history into a thrilling competition. Two celebrity teams race through iconic historic locations, solving puzzles and uncovering surprising stories from their country’s past, all leading to a final showdown. Essentially, it is a grand historical treasure hunt set across a nation’s most significant monuments and buildings.

Through three exciting rounds and a grand finale, contestants discover fascinating facts and quirky details about their shared heritage. With teamwork and quick thinking at its core, only one team can triumph. The format has already been optioned in six territories, including Germany and Spain, and was recently recognized at the Danish TV Awards (TV Prisen) with two nominations.

Ultimately, educational games—despite the name—are fun and full of potential. I look forward to including this growing trend in my next report. So, to all broadcasters: it’s time to put them on air again! They are well worth the investment…

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THE RISE OF PODCASTS

Another significant trend in today’s media is the surge of podcasts. With their evolving variations gaining traction among younger listeners, they are becoming an increasingly central part of the audiovisual landscape.

Video podcasts, for example, are now widely used across all platforms, including those owned by linear channels. A clear example is the Spanish public broadcaster RTVE and one of its BVOD service, RTVE En Play, which offers eight hours of live (!) video podcasts daily.

Another example of this growth in the contemporary TV is It Started with a Kiss. Produced by the ITV Studios label Twofour in partnership with the dating app Tinder, the podcast is hosted by Amy Spalding and Gareth Valentino, cast members from Twofour’s unscripted series I Kissed a Girl and I Kissed a Boy.

In this podcast, that will be launched Tuesday 28 April, the hosts are joined by guests to explore modern dating through an LGBTQ+ lens. The double-episode launch featured guests such as Christine McGuinness and Australian football player Joshua Cavallo. Future guests in the series will include Cat Burns, Rosie Jones, Tia Kofi, and Nathan Henry.

The project is the first from Studio 55, ITV’s incubator for next-generation media ventures. Studio 55 is built on two core pillars:

• Brand Licensing: An evolved business offering a seamless ‘one-stop shop’ for consumer products, live tours, and immersive fan experiences.

• Digital-First IP: A strategy to pair brands, marketing agencies, and content creators with ITV Studios’ deep archive to co-create digital-first formats.

Times have changed, and television must evolve with them.

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→ In the next issue: a full report on the recently concluded CONTENT EUROPE

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Norwegian broadcaster NRK is expanding its format Eternal Glory with a new team-based spin-off. Locally titled Mesternes mester team, the series is currently filming in Greece and is produced by Nordisk Banijay. A premiere is scheduled for late August. The new season brings together twelve former elite athletes — all previous participants of Eternal Glory — who will now compete in pairs rather than individually.

• Israeli Keshet 12 has commissioned Who Wants to Start?, a brand new celebrity format, created and hosted by Assi Azar - one of Israel’s leading television hosts and creators and a prominent voice for LGBTQ+ visibility. Produced by Baron Productions, Who Wants to Start? brings together five well-known celebrities who all share one defining life experience — from anxiety and divorce to parenthood, grief or starting over — and places them in a single room, filmed in the round in front of an intimate studio audience.

• Power Couple, the unscripted relationship format from Israel’s Dori Media, has secured renewals in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. RTL Hungary has renewed its local version for a 10th season, while Romania’s Antena has greenlit a fourth season and Bulgaria’s Nova has ordered a seventh. According to Dori Media, the format has now been adapted in 25 territories.

• L.A.-based Sonic Gods Studios has inked a partnership with Fremantle-owned Beach House Pictures to coproduce a Singapore-set version of its 60 Day Hustle business competition format. Created by Michelle Delamor and Chris Hayman and produced by Adam Horner 60 Day Hustle follows a group of early-stage entrepreneurs competing in an accelerator designed to test their ability to build, market and scale a business in just 60 days. It has aired two seasons on Prime Video, first launching in 2024.

• Banijay Entertainment has acquired global rights to Stop the Train, an adventure reality format that first gained traction as a YouTube sensation in France.

  Produced by Unfold Production in 2025, the series features a high-profile cast of French influencers. Set aboard a real moving train, the elimination game show follows contestants as they navigate a series of themed carriages. Their ultimate objective? Reach the locomotive in time to bring the journey to a halt.

• Banijay Rights has announced two revivals of its Deal or No Deal game show format in the Philippines and Turkey.

• Japanese entertainment conglomerate Yoshimoto Kogyo (LOL: Last One Laughing) has brought the global format rights to its comedy series The Laughing Throne to Banijay Entertainment. First produced by Yoshimoto and Kansai TV in 2017 and created by Chihara Jr., the series is an improvisation battle where a group of comedians circle a set of chairs, each assigned to a specific comedy theme, from one-liners to physical gags. When the music stops, the player without a seat must challenge another on that theme, with a panel of comedians judging the outcome.

• Ad-supported online channel VGTV has commissioned ITV Studios Norway to produce a new version of international reality dating format Love Island.

  Filming of Love Island Norway is planned for early autumn 2026, with a premiere in winter 2027. Casting is already underway.

• The Dancing With the Stars universe is expanding. A new spinoff series called Dancing With the Stars. The Next Pro is coming to ABC. The show was first rumored in February, and Hulu confirmed the news at the Get Real event in April.

  

In our March 13 issue, we highlighted a new trend appearing in the unscripted TV landscape: Fitness Formats. This trend is now confirmed by Battleground, a competition format created by Rusk Media in Mumbai. The show debuted in India with 20 million views and 2.5 billion social media impressions (though we must keep in mind that India’s population is almost 1.5 billion...). Banijay Entertainment recently acquired the global distribution rights for the show.

The format combines intense athleticism, reality-style drama, and digital engagement. It follows fitness influencers through a multi-stage tournament that includes a signature “combat-style” elimination phase. The competition features four teams, each led by a captain who can manage their roster through auctions and strategic athlete trades. Constant 24/7 filming provides the “reality” heart of the show, testing participants on everything from raw power and speed to agility and endurance.

Battleground completes Banijay’s “fitness trilogy,” joining the other two formats we analyzed on March 13: Last One Standing and The Bicycle Race.

Further proof of this trend comes from Iron Cage, a format from the German site Bild.de (the website of the German tabloid newspaper published by Axel Springer SE). Five fitness stars with impressive physiques will be locked in a cage filled with gym equipment. Viewers can follow them live 24/7 via more than 40 cameras. They will train, sleep, and live behind bars without showers, beds, or any privacy.

The winner is the first person to successfully push, lift, and pull a total of one million kilograms. (Thanks to Mark Land for flagging this).

The “Fitness Trend” certainly seems to be in top form!

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THE NOSTALGIA TREND

The second trend we are covering today—Nostalgia Shows (see our 10+1 Global Formats Trends in 2025 report: if you wish to receive a free copy, please let us know in the comments—boasts a longer tradition and even wider appeal. These formats take viewers, particularly older demographics, on a trip down memory lane, offering a comforting look back at classic songs, games, and TV hits.

A recent example is the German show Wer Weiß Wie Wann Was War? – Die Show der Generationen (Who Knows What, When, and How?). Produced by Raab Entertainment for RTL, the show premiered on March 14th on RTL and RTL+.

This weekly quiz show is co-hosted by popular entertainer Stefan Raab, together with Barbara Schöneberger. The format is designed as a nostalgic journey through pop culture, television, music, and history, fueled by the natural chemistry between two of Germany’s most recognizable stars.

The program invites both the studio audience and celebrity guests to test their memories as they explore different eras and cultural milestones alongside the hosts. Beyond audience participation, the show features special surprise segments with Barbara and Stefan, creating a festive and high-energy atmosphere for Saturday night television.

The prize money, totaling 100,000 euros, is awarded to the winning team or generation at the end of the episode. Before each round, the show airs short sketches featuring the hosts or documentary-style clips about specific historical events, all featuring music by Manfred Winkens.

Ultimately, it is a wholesome dose of nostalgia for the whole family—a perfect escape from the stress of modern times, at least for a Saturday night ;)

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A MASSIVE GAME FOR ATRESMEDIA

For several years now, Spain has established itself as a global hub for TV formats, particularly as a major importer (though it still trails slightly when it comes to exports). A leading player in this landscape is Atresmedia (Atresmedia Corporación de Medios de Comunicación, S.A.), which operates major broadcasters such as Antena 3 and laSexta.

To further solidify its market position, the group recently greenlit two new projects: an international acquisition and an original production.

The first is the local adaptation of Talpa Studios’ quiz show Caught in the Middle, from the global content house founded by John de Mol. Set to broadcast on Antena 3, the show will be produced by Fremantle Spain in partnership with Talpa Studios. It will be recorded later this year at Talpa’s international production hub in the Netherlands. This commission strengthens Talpa Studios’ ongoing relationship with Atresmedia, following previous adaptations such as The Jump and The Quiz with Balls.

Caught in the Middle fits into out third trend - Massive Games, i.e. games with a very high number of participants (this also is detailed in our 10+1 Global Formats Trends in 2025 report). The gameplay features a duo at the center of a giant LED arena, surrounded by 100 opponents. Over 15 questions, they must outsmart the crowd by selecting answers that match as many rivals as possible—eliminating them one by one before the opponents reach the middle to claim the €50,000 jackpot.

The format is visually striking – as are all those belonging to this family of games – but it doesn’t seem to bring any element of originality to this trend which, truth be told, has been repeating itself for some time now.

The second program is Cara al Show (roughly “Facing the Show”), developed in collaboration with Minuto de Barras as a weekly late-night program for laSexta.

Presented as a project “inspired by the great North American late-night shows,” the show will open with a monologue by Catalan presenter Marc Giró, who makes his debut on the channel following his departure from public broadcaster RTVE. The monologue will be followed by interviews with prominent figures from the worlds of culture, social activism, politics, and sports.

With this new addition, Atresmedia is solidifying its commitment to original in-house content—an editorial direction the group is pursuing with increasing interest. The issue, however, is that a program of this nature cannot truly be considered a “format” in the technical sense of the word.

Due to the specific genre, which lacks structured, repeatable mechanics and distinct elements of originality, it is essentially impossible (or at least extremely difficult) to export. Closing the gap between the desire to create formats and actually producing them is no easy task—and that holds true far beyond the Spanish borders.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• European production group Fremantle has secured the global production and distribution rights to ABC’s extreme crazy golf competition format Holey Moley.

  The company is completing a production hub in Portugal, where it hopes multiple local versions of the show will be filmed as the format finds new buyers around the world. Holey Moley, also known as Hole in One, is made by LA- and Sydney-based Fremantle label Eureka Productions (The Floor) for US network ABC and Australia’s Seven. It sees contestants face off on mini-golf courses featuring obstacles such as erupting volcanos, planetary rings and slippery slopes.

• UK format Taskmaster is getting a Polish remake following a deal with broadcaster TVN. The local version will be produced by format owner Avalon and Constantin, marking the 14th country to adapt the show. The format sees a host (Greg Davies in the UK) starring as the all-powerful ‘Taskmaster’ who tests the wiles, wit and wisdom of five comedians through a series of strange and surreal challenges.

• TelevisaUnivision’s Hispanic-language network UniMás has ordered a local adaptation of British format First Dates, which is distributed internationally by Warner Bros International TV Production (WBITVP). It is produced in Mexico City by Boxfish, which has offices in Argentina, Brazil and Spain. First Dates follows a first date between two people who have never met before in an elegant restaurant, where they get to know each other, have an intimate conversation and assess whether there is a potential romantic connection. At the end, both must decide whether they want to see each other again.

• Japan’s Nippon TV is readying three unscripted formats from its in-house production arm, Gyokuro Studio, for the international market. First is The Balance, a game show in which families compete solely through their sense of balance – from maneuvering umbrellas on the palm of their hands to using everyday kitchen tools as game tools. Next is Cooking Rush!, a culinary entertainment show incorporating a sushi-style conveyor belt. Two teams of chefs serve dishes at lightning speed, and the winner is determined simply by the number of plates consumed by 24 judges within the time limit. Last is the social experiment Majority Rules, which first aired in Japan on Nippon TV in February. The format sees 13 strangers isolated in a warehouse for 18 days and forced to govern every aspect of their lives by popular vote.

• Channel 4 has announced a new proof-of-concept development fund designed to back original British unscripted formats building on the pubcaster’s recent run of returnable series like Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing (pictured), Virgin Island and Secret Genius. The fund, overseen by Channel 4 head of commissioning development Art Sejdiu and senior commissioning editor Vivienne Molokwu, will greenlight three to five concepts, offering £100,000 each to provide what the channel calls “substantial development support” to indies to ensure that ideas are properly tested and refined.

• Airing every weekday on TRT, Lingo Türkiye has reached a major broadcasting milestone with its 400th episode. Distributed globally by All3Media International, the format is licensed and produced in Turkey by Shine Medya, with TRT serving as the broadcaster. Adapted in 18 territories worldwide and enjoyed by millions of viewers, Lingo continues to demonstrate the strength of a truly global format.

• Tresor has secured a major new commission from Sky Deutschland for the four-part docu-follow Ralf & Étienne: We Say Yes, that follows former Formula 1 driver Ralf Schumacher and his partner Étienne Bousquet-Cassagne in the lead-up to their wedding in Saint-Tropez on 30 May. This Sky Original marks Tresor’s first celebrity docu-follow, a genre that continues to gain strong traction with global streamers.

  

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YOUPARDY!

It is undeniable that YouTube has effectively become the new mainstream television. This topic has been discussed extensively both here and in hundreds of other magazines and newsletters. However, a recent announcement has brought these issues into even sharper focus, at least for me.

Sony Pictures Television (SPT) has commissioned a spin-off of Jeopardy! for YouTube, marking the first time that an entire season of the iconic game show has been produced exclusively for the Google-owned video platform. The YouTube series premiered the Jeopardy! YouTube channel on Tuesday 31 March, hosted and executive produced by Ken Jennings. You can watch it here.

Why is this news so important? (I repeat: at least to me). Because Jeopardy! (the historical quiz, which has been on air since 1964), is television in the purest, most traditional and ‘nostalgic’ sense of the word (the contestants’ tribute to the long-standing host of the quiz show, Alex Trebek, who was to pass away shortly afterwards, is one of the most moving moments in television history that I can recall).

Now, knowing that one of the most successful and enduring brands in television history is on YouTube, which is, of course, only natural, and that it will take on a ‘life of its own’ on Google’s platform really does strike me as the dawn of a new era. This won’t replace traditional television — Jeopardy! is one of the best programmes in that medium — but it will adapt and change it from within.

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DATING WITH (DICRETE) AI

On 20 April, the Catalan public broadcaster 3Cat will launch La Gran Cita (The Big Date), a dating show produced by Incís TV and hosted by presented by influencer Dulceida, that uses AI, as many others do. However, this time it is used in a subtle way that serves the programme’s purpose rather than seeking the ‘wow’ factor at all costs, which is now an obsolete approach.

The format features a mass blind date involving 100 people who have been pre-screened by a team of artificial intelligence (AI) experts, in order to identify 50 highly compatible couples, although neither the participants nor the audience will know who they are.

Over the course of eight episodes, the participants will go through three phases: the formation of couples, the development of their relationships and the final decision. Once the couples have been chosen, the participants will discover whether their choice matches their ideal partner according to the AI or not.

Using artificial intelligence to match potential couples is not a new idea. As far back as 2022, the Japanese show Love by AI (TBS) was already doing this. However, this is another step towards ‘normalising’ AI by integrating it coherently and naturally into formats, as seen recently in The Elevator Pitch (see FE, 27 February).

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VERTICAL UNSCRIPTED

The phenomenon of vertical content (also known as microdramas or vertical dramas) is now evident to everyone. Truth be told, few took notice until recently, when the revenue figures behind this business became so staggering that they were impossible to ignore (see, for example, How Microdramas Became a Multi-Billion Dollar Global Phenomenon).

It is therefore natural that, despite originating primarily as a vehicle for scripted storytelling, the format is now expanding into the non-fiction field.

A recent example is Chera TV, a new L.A.-based vertical streaming platform. Previewing its launch this spring, the platform has unveiled an unscripted format set for an April 27 release, signaling its commitment to non-fiction content from the very start.

One of these is the factual series Legal Queens, a reality show set inside West Coast Trial Lawyers, the L.A. firm famous for handling headline-making celebrity cases. The series follows an all-female team of attorneys navigating courtroom drama, celebrity clients, and intense rivalries under the leadership of CNN legal analyst Neama Rahmani. The project hails from L.A.-based Neighborhood Pictures.

While the platform is also premiering a slate of scripted series, such as To Her Beat and A Shot at Love, its strategic inclusion of unscripted content—even if currently focused on the factual genre—is indicative of the phenomenon’s growing importance and how the medium is set to evolve in the near future.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Canada’s Bell Media is returning to Cash Cab after 12 years with the greenlight of season 10 from Toronto-based Castlewood Productions. The upcoming season is the first to be commissioned by Bell Media since season eight, which debuted in 2014. GameTV picked up the series’ ninth season in 2024, revamping the format as Cash Cab Music. The first two episodes of the 26-episode season will premiere on linear channel Much on April 22, and stream the next day on Crave.

• Netflix’s Love on the Spectrum has been renewed for Season 5, following the successful debut of its fourth season; Season 3 of the dating show, which follows young adults with autism, ranked in the Global Top 10 for two weeks. The docu-reality series, which also features two seasons of an Australian version, has won multiple Emmys.

• British public service broadcaster Channel 4 has renewed gameshow panel format Taskmaster for six additional seasons. As part of the deal, Greg Davies and Alex Horne will continue in their roles as the taskmaster and his small sidekick, with full episodes also being made available on YouTube in the UK for the first time. Channel 4, which has aired the format since 2020, also announced it has renewed Taskmaster’s New Year Treat and Taskmaster Champion of Champions.

• CBC has renewed the unscripted series The Assembly for a second season.

  Vancouver-based Small Army Entertainment will begin shooting the new season of the interview format this month, with a premiere targeted for the fall. Small Army’s Sean De Vries and Stephen Sawchuk are executive producers.

• Paramount+ has greenlit the new unscripted series Team Moms, from executive producer Kim Kardashian. The series, which is set to premiere later this year, delves into the world of nationally competitive youth baseball at Scottsdale, Arizona’s first and only baseball prep school.

• Paramount+ has also renewed Canada Shore, its adaptation of the MTV reality format, for a second season. Produced by Blue Ant-owned Insight Productions, the new season is set to go into production in Kelowna, British Columbia this summer.

• Warner Bros. Discovery-owned cable net Food Network is lifting the lid on the new competition series Chopped Castaways, an eight-episode spinoff of its long-running Chopped franchise. The series will premiere on May 12, and will be available to stream the following day on HBO Max. It sees 12 chefs stranded on a remote island, battling the elements across two cooking rounds conducted entirely over an open fire each week. Each episode opens with survival-driven physical challenges — including archery, spearfishing, diving in the ocean and digging in the sand — to secure the ingredients needed.

• Banijay Entertainment has acquired the global rights to youth-skewing fitness competition format Battleground, originating from Mumbai-based Rusk Media.

  Battleground is described as blending “physical sport, reality drama and audience interactivity in a premium format built for global audiences.”

• Finally, a piece of news that we are very sorry to share. With this brief and sad farewell, the historic and authoritative World Screen ceases publication after 40 years of history. Goodbye, World Screen, and thank you for everything!

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The English prank show Celebrity Sabotage, created by Lifted Entertainment (part of ITV Studios), premiered on ITV last Saturday, 21st March. In each episode, a group of unsuspecting participants arrive to appear on what they believe to be a new ITV entertainment show. But everything is fake: the logo, the script, the host and even the set, which undergoes total transformations.

The main twist is that there is a group of celebrities hidden behind the scenes who watch the contestants and carry out sabotage missions in an attempt to increase the prize fund. Everyone involved, from the celebrity saboteurs and crew to the famous hosts, knows the secret. While the unsuspecting contestants battle it out on fake shows, the undercover celebrities infiltrate and sabotage the action — all without getting caught.

In the first episode, for example, former Dragons’ Den star Sara Davies takes centre stage as the host of a fake show called The Applicant, which is similar to the BBC’s The Apprentice. The contestants are tasked with impressing Sara, 41, with a £30,000 prize pot up for grabs. However, the saboteurs must successfully ruin the game with their antics and blame it on the contestants.

The concept is certainly not new. Fake reality shows have existed.... almost since the beginning of reality TV. The very first one was The Joe Schmo Show, a fake ‘Big Brother/Big Prank Show’, which premiered on Spike TV (now the Paramount Network) in 2003 and was rebooted last year. In the show, a participant (the ‘Joe Schmo’) thinks he’s competing for a chance to win $100,000 on a popular show, when in fact he’s surrounded by a cast of skilled improv comedians.

There are also quite a few ‘meta-reality’ shows featuring hidden celebrities interacting with unsuspecting participants in a ‘second-level reality’, such as the amusing The Underdog: Josh Must Win, which aired on Channel 4 in 2024.

But the most similar example to Celebrity Sabotage is Koso Koso (Nippon TV), in which contestants believe they are taking part in a reality show while a secret squad of celebrity agents is constantly observing their every move. In the Japanese show, the undercover agents must complete ridiculous missions without arousing suspicion to win cash for the clueless contestants by entering the scene directly (but without being spotted), and it must be said that the comic effect is greater.

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INDIAN ALLIES

Talpa Studio’s The Alliance is a reality format now in its third year on SBS6 (owned by Talpa Network), which is a kind of “springboard” for Talpa’s formats, primarily designed to be sold on international markets. In any case, The Alliance has reached strong ratings and engagement, achieving a good 20.8% market share (among the key 25-59 demographic, live +6) at the start of 2026, which is significantly above the channel average. The format also continues to generate strong online engagement across social media platforms, delivering over 60 million monthly views and underlining its broad and loyal fanbase.

And so, in the end, Talpa achieved its main objective too, because the format is set for its first international adaptation, following the previously announced collaboration between Talpa Studios and Banijay Asia, with the format now having been commissioned in India. Banijay Asia will produce a Hindi-language version for Prime Video India, where the series is set to launch globally as premium flagship content.

In The Alliance, 16 participants are divided into four teams at the start of each month. They compete in physical and knowledge-based games, secret missions and manipulative tactics in order to rise in the rankings. The climax comes in the knockout phase, when the final team compete against each other for the chance to win €100,000. With a structure that allows for indefinite continuation or monthly closure, the format is as versatile.

Trust, strategy and social gameplay are key in the show, as players must navigate shifting team dynamics and rising pressure. For this reason, it can be seen as part of the trend of ‘Psycho Formats’, which, following in the footsteps of The Traitors, are dominating the international scene. However, having run out of innovative ideas, they risk becoming repetitive and too similar to each other.

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FRENCH COUGAR

On Monday 13 April, French channel M6 will premiere Cougar Island, a programme created by Studio 89 Productions. A cougar is typically a woman in her 40s or older who pursues romantic or sexual relationships with younger men. However, there is a twist in this format for our three protagonists, Estéfania, Sandra and Lia, and their younger suitors.

The three women have settled on a paradise island to meet their potential partners. They are all looking to break free from their routines and experience intense, genuine romances with younger men. Twelve men have signed up for the experience, hoping to win the women over and sweep them off their feet.

But one morning, everything suddenly changes. The young suitors disappeared, only to be replaced by nine single men of the same age as the three candidates — the very men they had always avoided. It was an unexpected situation that they had been trying to avoid. According to the M6 press release, it is an opportunity “to reflect on several issues, including the qualities they look for in a man”. The real question the programme poses is: does love really have an age?

As we can see, the format is fairly basic, but if done well, it can hold a few surprises, particularly thanks to the ‘age-defying love’ twist that lies at the heart of recent programmes – all quite different from one another, but all quite interesting – such as, for example, Age of Attraction, which launched on Netflix just this month.

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NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

• Atresmedia and Fremantle Spain have unveiled the fifth series of Mask Singer: Guess Who’s Singing, which will soon return to Spanish channel Antena 3 with significant changes to the format, new investigators and a focus on enhancing the show’s entertainment value.

• Antena TV Group has acquired the adaptation rights to Onza Distribution’s The Anthill to produce a local version of the format in Romania. The original Spanish series, El Hormiguero, is a daily prime-time show hosted by Pablo Motos that presents a mix of celebrity interviews, humor, science and spectacular experiments. It has had more than 20 seasons since its launch in 2006.

• US cable network Discovery Channel has commissioned seven new series, including spin-offs from Naked & Afraid and In the Eye of the Storm.

  Naked & Afraid: Global Showdown, produced by Lionsgate Alternative Television, follows survivalists from across the world as they compete for the franchise’s largest ever cash prize. Arrow Media-produced In the Eye of the Storm: Chasers follows teams of real-world storm chasers and certified weather spotters as they venture into America’s ‘tornado alley.’

• Telefe has announced the return of Popstars, one of the most memorable music programmes in the history of Argentine television. The show will launch a nationwide call for applications for women aged 18–25.

Friday’s Espresso is taking a week’s holiday. See you after the break, on Friday 10 April!