An 'IMHO' TV Blog

We’ve been there, watched that, and saw the after-show.

Now I’m already thinking about series 2. And the international adaptations. I know full well this will be a slew of questions that I would know the answer too if I was more experienced, but I’m not, and I would very much like to hear what others with more knowledge think!

Netflix has bought the rights for regional adaptations of The Circle: now how does that work? Will it be grouped by continent or language? Will I be able to watch all three iterations of it if I wanted - rather, will they all be regional exclusive or can we just bite the bullet and have three versions under the same title all available? 

Then will there be format changes to each of the regions as has happened with Big Brother in the past? NA is more strategic, we’ve spoken about that before. Will there be varying degrees of social and competitive mechanics? 

Will there be the tie to the as-live (am I using that correctly?) production decisions and actions of S1? Letting audiences vote for certain things on the app, submit questions, for the show to react to the twitter criticisms in the early days of broadcast? How does that work on Netflix....? Does it transpose?

Again, let’s look, as we often find ourselves doing, at North American BB. You could upload previous seasons and not disturb much of how it was experienced originally - in-house votes, and jury decisions for a winner. At the very most, America’s Favourite Player goes to a public vote.

My partner Alex (@UndeniablyAlex on Twitter) has talked previously about the idea of Netflix One - a hypothetical service within Netflix where viewers can gather at particular times for certain shows ‘live broadcast’, which would allow real-time voting windows. It may not be in the immediate, but I see something like that possibly happening in SVOD future.

This brings us to an infographic of where me and Alex think The Circle could go. It is a show not without fault in its first series, and that’s okay. It’s for the best they were able to alter certain things during three weeks of broadcast, but some of it seemed funny... (the glaring incident being when events meant Kate would be most at risk to getting blocked, the blocking conveniently was different)

Now, important to this is that this infographic leaves out all the othering possibilities as to why this wouldn’t work off the bat for S2. Namely, Buffers.

As discussed in my previous The Circle post, the majority of UK contestants - never mind viewers - aren’t ready for a strategic approach yet. We have the exceptions of S1 and perhaps I’m not giving benefit of the doubt for if the rules did change and producers outlined that there must be an attempt to play strategically. But really, I think players would use buffers very very very close to the beginning. It’s in our instincts to err on the side of caution, and I imagine the fear of being first out of the show would be very real, and a LOT of people would use it on the early ratings. Meaning a lot of people would waste it.

Granted, Buffers would allow another dimension when the selected player returns. “You’ve shown your true colours!”, “Oh so now you don’t like me?” Etc, etc. It really depends what you want from the show. Maybe you want spat fights because sometimes they are massively entertaining. 

But a very important part of the show is how it is a microcosmic social network. 

For Example: If Alex blocks me on (real) social media, I cannot bounce that back at him and reject that. If anything, blocking is a sense of security in some instances. Yes, you can choose to block a user for many different reasons, but it is supposed to be a means of protection online. 

An alternative to using a buffer for immunity, and something we suspect the show will have fun with, is bringing back blocked players under new personas and profiles.

Likewise the final ratings was... flawed. We now know that the surprising (and winning) vote was Freddie giving Kate 2 stars instead of the 1 he gave to Dan and Sian. I am very interested as to what would have been prepared in the very unlikely, but still possible, circumstance of there being a four-way-tie.

Our proposed jury is a tried and tested mechanic and is not original, but every jury (and their reasons) would be different. Because it all comes down to the longterm relationships. S1 Final ratings was kind of tainted with that, given Freddie gave Kate those 2 stars probably due to his admiration and how their relationship matured. But jury is more explicit in ensuring that players vote with that “and what have we learnt” mindset.

Hello folksies,

I am on !mpossible this coming week. Granted, a show a lot of people don’t know much about. It’s a show I’ve wanted to be on for a while, because I think it gets a lot of stuff right - for viewers, contestants, questions, trends. Here we go:

!mpossible is becoming a staple in quiz, alongside the likes of Pointless/The Chase, trying out the weekday primetime spot with its last broadcast series (unexpectedly moving back to 2:15pm for the current series). To loosely compare it to Pointless becomes interesting, as clearly they are deemed similar enough to earn the same time slot on the same channel but they distinctly feel like different ‘generations’ of shows, the product of different trends. 

!mpossible cracks the ‘returnee’ nature by keeping contestants on for a week’s worth of episodes - which in studio is only a day and a half, at the most - with the same lot of contestants for the duration. This allows contestants to feel more gratified in getting in a good performance, and the format gives them the opportunity to make it to the grid/head-to-head final more than once. It also lets the contestants build an ongoing relationship with Rick and each other. That’s a nice sense of community to experience as an audience too.

For me, the main draw to apply for the show was this friendly nature. While it was still competitive it was a very different atmosphere to Fifteen To One (a show I was also on, and is also noted for having large numbers of contestants who return). Granted, Fifteen To One is more strategic and you can play directly against other competitors in nominating them to answer in the hope they will lose a life. I love strategy, but it can be fierce in certain settings, having definitely noticed seasoned quizzers aim on eliminating younger players earlier as easy pickings. A quiz show can be emotionally straining enough if you’re having a bad go of it, but to feel like a target too is very uncomfortable! Seeing this happen enough times could talk out a potential applicant of experiencing the show, which is a shame, but a valid feeling to have. !mpossible boasts a friendly community on the day to day, it’s not rushed, it’s a comfortable atmosphere and becomes far more accessible for contestants. I think we need more accessibility in contestant-led formats! You don’t have to be best of the best to have good odds at winning !mpossible - which is how it should be!  For example, sport may not be a person’s question of choice but if in a list of supposed “female rowing champions” they spot a member of Girls Aloud, they can at least survive to the next question. Also, if everyone is having a ‘bad show’ and eventually everyone puts an !mpossible answer at one point or another, absolutely everyone can get another chance to get back for the final which is a really exciting element. In Pointless, a couple who has a dud first round only has their second show to salvage themselves. And the dud performance may still be lingering in their head.

On !mpossible, everyone is in their own race for a place in the final and the three players who make the final do go ‘head to head’, more directly. !mpossible is structured very nicely as well. For the amount of contestants, you could lose the personalities in the questions and vice versa lose the quiz to the people. 5 questions in each of the three rounds does not initially seem like enough but then paired with the Grid at the end of each of this rounds, splits out into a new question format again. In total we (as an audience) are getting to play along with 15 multiple choice questions, 4 question board/grids (including the final), and a quick fire quiz. That is a lot of variety and a lot of substance for viewers, especially at a 5:15pm slot, that there will be something there for everyone.

!mpossible has a wonderful array of questions too. I learnt that E20 was a fictional postcode of Eastenders, which became real when it became the postcode of London’s Olympic Park. I love questions like that. I don’t need to know that but it’s a really fun piece of trivia. I think it’s important for quiz to be enthusiastic and celebratory of knowledge. And you don’t have to know everything or win every quiz to still be able to enjoy participating in that. I appreciate I have leant towards niceness in quiz shows here, but the average person doesn’t enjoy being told they are wrong, especially when they know they are wrong and they’ve just been unlucky with a question or ten. Contestant-led shows should be accessible to non-quiz buffs. Audiences want to see people who are of the same general knowledge level as themselves do well or get extraordinarily lucky. 

I loved The Circle and honestly really didn’t expect to. I had so many sponsored adverts on Instagram in the week prior and the trailer didn’t really grab me. I thought C4 was 7/8 years too late in bringing a “oohhh the trouble with social media!” format to the table. Watching it, the now-cliche Tinder and Instagram nods are there, which granted would not have been there had the show been made 7/8 years earlier. The tone of the show that came across in adverts was “who will go v i r a l”, when in fact it trawled, very interestingly, into the close relationships we have online. The Twitter mutuals, the recent FB add of someone you might be interested in, a tinder match about 3 weeks deep into steady conversation.

I could go on, but I’m trying to summarise: I was surprised about how nuanced The Circle was! And to site it as a precautionary tale of not knowing if people are who they say they are is entirely reductive to this really strong format!

It was sold to us badly, it did feel a bit cringe on launch night. Studio Lambert retweeted reams of comments in the initial days of how “this is trash tv but im addicted lol”. Really? Were they reading these or just retweeting any mention? Once things settled, it was clear we had notable game-players.

Let’s look at our Final 4.

Freddie had a story to why he “played a straight game” but he was tuned into every comment he passed, even the flippant ones. He was playing a solid game. Kate also had extreme commitment to his game because to be off-guard for a second would have shown his lie, triggered a feeling of betrayal and people don’t like having their feelings hurt in UK shows, so either of them would have been punished.

Dan and Sian were nice people. They seem lovely! But Dan being true to himself gave Kate the win, undoubtedly. For Dan and Sian to say in the final ratings that they don’t want to hurt people’s feelings is ridiculous! The friends that they had made would still be there once one of the four of them won £50k/75k. There was never going to be a final where no one won.

Dan and Sian were playing the audience-oriented side of the game (which the show had). Big Brother is the pioneer of this for British TV. As seen with Roxanne in the last CBB, the British public have gone from loving big personalities to honing in on punishing those wrong-doers who always end up pot-stirring. I’ve noticed this with the Twitter reaction to the most recent series of Love Island. Girls were identifying so-and-so’s manipulative behaviour, talking about experiences of their own exes, finger-pointing and deconstructing. That was an unprecedented reaction to a reality show I think. That is when the shift happened between loving the “larger than life characters” and “wow, that’s awful, are we all in agreement with that? Let’s honour the nice folk instead” and the thousands of RTs that come with.

So Dan and Sian were playing well to the new age of BB, of niceness and personality. They could have been a Big Brother winner - but they were not in Big Brother.

Freddie and Kate played a very calculated game. They played a game! Freddie loved a fight, sure, but would even extend the olive branch to Harry in the hopes of showing kindness to everyone or pretending to give a shit at least, for the benefit of his popularity. If that backfired then cool, he got a reaction because he’s still engaging with other people in a tactical way and maybe they didn’t like that.

Granted, Kate played nice too, but Kate wasn’t Kate. Kate was a bit of a wallflower at times, but still had done enough to make relationships and sincere relationships as a person who didn’t exist. They were consistent in that because Alex put a lot of himself into that ‘role’. But then came the accusations, some more forthright than others and he wanted just to say to Dan to soften the blow but knew it would cost him his game. And it became so interesting to watch two people being true to themselves with a massive lie that played an essential part in maintaining that relationship. Now let’s wiggle with another comparison to Big Brother and it’s North American counterpart. For those less familiar, BBUS & BBCan is a strategy-elimination competition format. The power is in the house: the players up for eviction are chosen in house and the decision is made as a vote from the players in house. No phone lines. Occasionally fan favourites, but winners are winners through alliances, strategy, and gameplay. In a small house, where anyone can walk in on any conversation. Lots of hush hush whisper whisper and ‘victory dances’ inelegantly styled into just picking up washing to go through to the laundry room, etc.

In The Circle the audience got to hear an inner monologue. Which is importantly different from the diary rooms in either UK or North American BB. You’re not recalling at a later point, you’re reacting real time. They were no where near each other so they verbalise their thought process in regards a conversation, a relationship, a strategy. Freddie spoke his mind, we know this. But it was so important in making the show interesting for the viewer. Rather than just see this guy go through all the niceties with people at face value, we also got to hear what he really thought of them, why he asked what he did, how he hopes they will response to a certain action of his, etc. When any player was trying to bluff and state their intentions we sometimes had a lovely back and forth between apartments of, for example, Harry speculating if Freddie is reacting as such just to throw him off his own suspicions - when that is exactly what Freddie was doing - but Harry still falling for it anyway.

And getting into the habit of discussing gut reaction to camera before composing a response sometimes added another dimension. Kate gave Dan ammunition in fact, when he started talking out his options before composing a response - Dan was able to suss that Kate was contemplating a safe response, and that was evidence enough that Kate was not confident in their own honesty and therefore probably a catfish.

The endgame was weak - the only reason it didn’t go deadlock was because we had two players in the final who were notoriously nice and worried about hurting people (as mentioned earlier). If that mechanic was in BBUS/BBCan it would go to deadlock every single time (unless there’s a showmance or Golden Balls I’ll-steal-but-really-split-afterwards alliance). At the last hurdle before £50k, you do not vote anyone higher than the lowest rating on offer, why would you! But because Alex did not falter on his lie, regardless of how close he came to owning up, he won. We know Dan gave 5 stars and it had to be to Kate. At least they became wary of the hivemind always crowning golden girl Sian: she is lovely and she kept getting extortionately high ratings. She didn’t win because two of the three people voting for her had wised up to committing to the game in ratings in the final hours.

Now. The fan favourite vote. We came out in our hoards because we thought Sian would win and agreed Kate deserved something. I do think that in the instance that the same person topped both votes, the second in line should have got the £25K honestly. The show was not advertised with the £25K until very late in the game. I don’t think the players knew they should have been playing to the public either? Some might have just covered that base because they were used to the fodder of other shows but certainly Freddie seemed shocked that that was even a component.

The thing that annoys me is that this show had a “in house” decision for a winner - an uber rare thing for UK telly - but they felt they needed to cater to conventions the people know and bait them with a “but you have a say!” I don’t want a say! I should be able to trust the mechanics of the show! At least it wasn’t a pay to phone vote, and it was a smart way to get us all on the app (for the last 3 days of the series). I’ve never really counted myself in for phone/app-votes because I feel like it’s inconsequential because not everyone who has a strong opinion can be bothered to jump through hoops. I did support it this time however because of course I wanted Kate to get their owed recognition. And the track record of ratings predicted Sian as the clear winner. But with Alex winning both prizes, shows: i) Contestants were able to play and vote strategically when it mattered. Or at least most of them. They should have been doing it sooner, but push came to shove when it mattered most. ii) The voting public wanted to see a strong, tactical player win. A lot of the audience were watching nervously to see Alex/Freddie get by okay without being rumbled. And the show fully knew that and were absolutely right to use that to their advantage.

Both contestants and viewers responded really enthusiastically to this quasi-strategic format. They respected gameplay and didn’t see it as deceitful but were able to divide the person from their strategy. They still respected the people which is utterly important but I believe that is an overall shift we have comfortably settled into now as an audience.

[Originally written for The Network, a blog about our experience of the TV Festival]

The few main programme events I managed to attend at the TV Festival seemed to be full of whispers of the “16-to-34 year olds” who have apparently stopped watching TV. I certainly wasn’t incognito, at 21 years old and wearing stupid student clothes and colourful make-up in a… well, quite professional environment honestly. Graduated less than a season, The Network and the TV Festival was my first event, scheme, conference – call it what you like – where we weren’t all defined by our subjects, courses, or results. That was nice. Freeing, if a little scary. We couldn’t small talk about where we studied, what we were looking forward to doing in the coming academic year. We small talked about ourselves (“networking”, as such) and how great we could be for you and yours - even though we’re still grasping for the first rung of our career ladders.

Regardless of age, we definitely felt like newbies. The same pang of anxiety caused by starting secondary school or Freshers Weeks travelled with me for the whole week. But rather than dread the new batch of first years, the Higher Ups in the industry seemed a bit baffled as to whether or not we would… turn up at all? Of course, we were there – we were just busy with our workshops (for myself, a development workshop run by Endemol where I accidentally triggered quite a large discussion about North American Big Brother and strategy-elimination shows…). The illusive 16-to-34 year olds came out in their forces at the Cromdale to show they’re very much ready to pick up on the conversations and open questions posed by controllers, granted that the door remains open to us.

It struck me as bizarre that we were there, a 60 strong gang of new-starts, and people kept referring to us in the 3rd person. We’re sitting here! At the back! Listening to Michaela Coel’s Mactaggart Lecture – shocked by her stories, encouraged by her achievements, and knowing full well that more than half of what’s she’s spoken about was new information to the majority of industry folk in the room, never mind the Head of Comedy who oversaw Chewing Gum…