I’m going through Survivor withdrawal right now (it’s still months before Survivor: Africa debuts in the US), so I’ve bookmarked the website for the version currently running in the United Kingdom.
Apparently it’s not doing well in the ratings, but that may be because they were showing it twice a week. Part of the fun of the show here in the States was all the gossip and speculation between episodes, and three days between episodes probably isn’t enough time for the excitement to build.
At the British Survivor website I see these castaways have also been thrown up on Pulau Tiga. I wonder if they’ve found any artifacts left behind by Richard, Rudy, Colleen et al., and if they’ve been seen onscreen.
Also, I note that Mark Burnett’s name is not associated with this production in any way that I can find. I thought he was British himself, and that Survivor was his baby?
I watched some of the first episode and I’ve caught bits of other ones since. I don’t find it that interesting to be honest and most of the participants are either boring or irritating.
One of the main reasons it’s not doing too well is that Big Brother II recently started. It’s practically live (updates every evening on channel 4 and 18 hours a day on a five minute delay on the digital channel E4) whereas Survivor has finished filming. There is generally a lot more discussion about BB, but even that is less popular than the first series. I don’t know about the US but I think we’re getting tired of “reality TV” over here.
I watched the first episode too and I was HUGELY disappointed with it. Compared to Big Brother it has NO soul whatsoever. Totally style over substance. There is no feeling of intimacy or getting to know people and no sense of excitement. Rubbish.
It’s now down to 6 million viewers. ITV have dropped the interviews they were having with the kicked out contestants because noone was watching them. And why should they? Is celebrity really that cheap these days that you become one from appearing as a small part in one 1-hour show? Madness. They spent, I believe, £9million on the show. And its being caned by Weakest Link on the BBC, as show that hands out a few thousand per episode.
I’m not British, but in the show’s defense, it takes a while to get attached to the people in it. When the second season started, I thought it was lame and soulless and boring compared to the first season, but then as time went by and the groups got smaller, I got just as attached to the new group.
It could be a casting problem. Maybe the contestants chosen for the British version weren’t interesting enough? (I haven’t seen it.)
I always thought that was part of the reason Big Brother tanked in the US. All of the cast members last year were either stupid, boring, annoying, or some combination of the three. None of them seemed like someone with whom I would seek out a friendship.
Is that a problem for the British version of Survivor?
My question is whether they have stuck to the original style of Survivor. Part of what drew me into the first season was the well done documentary style production.
Have they kept it simple, or have they tried to jazz it up a bit? And how much did Mark Burnett lend to the overall look and feel of the production in the US, which may be missing in the British version? Someone would need to see them both to tell us.
It’s easy to see that in the hands of the WRONG filmmaker, Survivor never would have been the success it is here.
Then again, on David B’s thread someone mentioned that Big Brother was giving up some nice bits of nudity. Is Survivor UK playing that card, too?
Just imagine how big Survivor US would have been with a few flashes of flesh thrown in there…
I’ve been hooked on survivor from day one and infinately prefer it to Big Brother. Unfortunately the general public at large doesn’t agree with me, hence the latter has double the viewing figures of the former. This disparity is one of the reasons they’ve switched survivors broadcast schedule from 4 nights a week to 1. Life sucks
I don’t think it’s a casting problem, spoke-. I haven’t seen it (is there a way to see it in the US?), but I know one of the contestants is a 24-year-old former beauty queen who’s now the youngest-ever detective constable in UK history.
Another is a 30-year-old model; one of the men is an airline pilot and RAF veteran.
And two of the players (one married) had an affair with each other.
So on paper at least, it looks like an interesting mix of personalities and situations.
Survivor is based on Robinsson a Swedish show several years old. This past season of Survivor, Anniz got to see most of it, and commented to me that there was absolutely nothing new in it, particularly in the actions of the people.
I caught one episode of Robinsson last fall in Sweden. It’s exactly the same, except instead of one or two cute women (Colleen, Amber, Elisabeth…) on the show, there were six or seven of them.
