It’s not so easy to know exactly what’s going on in the Chinese format landscape. Even though MipCom has named China the 2023 country of honor, most of their shows still continue to remain a bit mysterious to us. So, let’s see one of them, recently launched.
Crush Over 2023 premiered on Oct 21st on the Tencent Video platform WeTV and is also available on YouTube. The format, hosted by actor and martial artist Donnie Yen, (pic below) is defined a “survival reality” and openly inspired by the Korean Netflix's Physical: 100 (see FE 20th Jan).
47 “strong” contestants - athletes, retired military personnel, rock climbers and fitness enthusiasts - challenge each other in a series of “extreme” trials that puts their endurance to the test, during 21 harsh days, inside a big studio.
The opening ranking system of the first episode was quite interesting. Each contestant was asked to choose a number from one to 47, based on their self-assessed abilities, with one being the strongest. This number determined the weight of the vest (from 1kg to 8kg) they had to wear.
After every challenge, that are physical and mental at the same time (for example, playing a kind of huge chess game with giant pieces), the captains of the loser teams must enter the “decompression chamber” to vote the contestant who has to leave the game forever.
Not particularly original or remarkable as a whole, but with but with a few interesting insights.
To read the other 2 articles about a British celebrity spin-off and a Dutch adventure reality... set in a peculiar campsite go to NEWSLETTER
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Chinese Crush
