Okay, here's the pitch. A reality competition show in which American contestants go to other countries and have to adapt. Does that sound like CBS's The Amazing Race? It did to me, but apparently it's not. ABC has ordered an unscripted competition show in which Americans go abroad and face challenges. I guess this is a case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?Hell's Kitchen producer Arthur Smith is behind this new game/reality thingie, having previously done The Swan for ABC. The working title has been Big in Japan, but now that the producers are considering foreign lands other than the land of the rising sun, a new handle is being developed. ABC hasn't specified how many episodes of the show are slated, but they have been given the go ahead.
By the by, NBC has a similar show in the works called I Can Do That, but instead of trekking the globe, contestants on this one will remain in the United States.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-19-2008 @ 5:12PM
Jeff N. said...
I doubt either show will be as good as Amazing Race.
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3-19-2008 @ 5:22PM
RadioScott said...
Is this The Mole? Sounds like it. I thought ABC was bringing that back.
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3-19-2008 @ 8:48PM
Bash said...
Since when do contestants have to manage anything country-related on "The Amazing Race"?
on TAR they do stuff 99.9% of the people from those countries won't ever have to do in their whole lives like pole jumping in Holland or sniffing out the one real flower in a fake-flower-shop in Taiwan (?). Or eating two pounds of meat (to take some examples from last season of TAR and the famous Romber-ploy simply not to eat that much meat together with other teams).
Also, TAR is a RACE. "Big In Japan" implies that they stay in only one country at a time and simply have to do stuff that people from those countries have as a regular job that's country-specific - for instance in Japan making sushi, conducting a tea-ceremony, filling those gazillion of vending machines, working in an electronics-store in Akihabara, workin as a conductor on the Shinkansen, working at a shrine, making chopsticks, herding Kobe-cows, handing out towels in an onsen (hot springs batch), fetching food for a sumo-ringer, working in a plinko-gameshop, working in a go-bar (no not gogo, the game Go), working at the front desk in a capsule-hotel et cetera et cetera et cetera.
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