It’s important to have variety in your daily television diet, in fact, it’s important to have variety in your variety. I’ve been watching a lot of dating-based reality shows lately and that can melt your brain real quick so recently, I’ve turned to the competition reality show. I can’t watch people eat scorpions or anything so have no fear I’ll recommend something like that. What follows are my two new favorite competition shows that don’t involve doing gross things.
The Mole (Netflix): From 2001-2008, a reality TV black hole for me, a show called The Mole aired on ABC. This was in turn based on a Belgian series called De Mol that has been iterated in over 40 countries, all with their own local variations on the same theme: a bunch of contestants are competing for prize money, but one of them is secretly working against everyone else. If the mole is discovered before the end of the game, then the remaining contestants keep the prize. If not, the mole takes the lot. In a fun bit of trivia, Anderson Cooper hosted the initial American season and some celebrity seasons featured such luminaries as Stephen Baldwin, Kathy Griffin, and Dennis Rodman. The series seems to have been plagued with uncertainty, often taking multiple years off between seasons, switching hosts, and revamping the format multiple times in hopes of recapturing the first season’s magic. Nearly 20 years later, Netflix has decided to try their hand at that format, and the result is a really fun adventure series filled with elaborate games, interesting characters, and incredibly gorgeous shots of Australia. At least part of the funding for the show must have come from Australia’s tourism board, as each episode of the season takes place in a unique part of Australia and the challenges are usually tied to a piece of Australian history, ecology, or just insane natural beauty. Hosted by the journalist Alex Wagner (who has some great outfits and handles the twists with aplomb), the series is a winner. I could see it getting tiresome were it endlessly iterated or filled with C-list celebrities (which seems to have been the death knell for the original series), but as it stands it feels like an unexpectedly fresh entry into the reality competition space. Watch if you like successful reboots, Alex Wagner’s jumpsuits, or the country of Australia.
The Traitors (Peacock): You may be sensing a theme, but this is a reality series about a bunch of people gathered together in a foreign country performing in a series of challenges to win money who are constantly being thwarted by secret traitors. It’s also based on a similar series from a Northern European country, in this case a Dutch series called De Varraders (everything sounds better in Dutch). The series is clearly building on the success of The Mole reboot, as its plot is nearly identical. However, there are a couple upgrades in this version that should hopefully send you running for your remote. First, the series is set in Scotland in a gorgeous antique castle that has been decorated by what seems to be Macbeth’s fabulous cousin. It’s ominous, opulent, and insane, like the mansion from Clue, but more… Scottish. Second, half the cast is made up of people from other reality series, which is simultaneously sort of annoying but also sort of enjoyable. Like I didn’t know I wanted to watch Ryan Lochte try and dig himself out of a grave, but now that I’ve seen it I’m the better for it. Third, and most importantly, this show is hosted by legendary Scot Alan Cumming. Cumming is a scenery-chewer of the first order and he wastes no time here, showing up in purple tartan and making six Macbeth jokes in the first five minutes. Watch if you like the movie Burlesque or The Scottish Play or that Scottish game where they throw giant telephone polls to prove their manhood.