Programming Profile

Adventure reality formats from yesteryear are being dusted down and new ones launched to tap into the red-hot unscripted action-adventure genre, as delegates at last month’s Content London heard.

Action-adventure formats have been buzzworthy in the unscripted space for a little while now, and talk of how the genre was booming was a hot topic at C21’s Content London last month.

Whether it’s down to this summer’s dual strikes in the US or the soaring cost of drama, our screens are awash with classics like Fort Boyard on France 2, reboots like Survivor on the BBC, newer shows like the UK pubcaster’s Race Across the World, big swings with blockbuster budgets like Amazon Prime Video’s 007: Road to a Million or more niche concepts like Be Entertainment’s Destination X. It’s clear that adventure-reality is a genre that is evolving while drawing big audiences back to linear TV.

Evidence of this was the fact that the latter format was named best competition reality series at the Rose d’Or Awards, held last month as a precursor to Content London. Originally produced by Geronimo for VTM in Belgium, Destination X has been shopped by Be Entertainment to buyers in countries including the Netherlands and Germany.

The news continues a hot trend for formats from Benelux in 2023, after Be Entertainment picked up three prizes at C21’s International Format Awards, including two for Destination X, in Cannes in October.

Action-adventure formats have also been driving the headlines in recent months. A good example is Talpa Studios’ recently announced strategic partnership with Signal.Stream, a Dutch content and production house focused on creating inventive, unscripted formats for digital-native audiences on the streaming market. The first project of this collaboration is No Way Back, a new adventure reality show set against the backdrop of Norway’s rugged landscape.

Explaining the expansion in action-adventure, Geraldine Smink, who leads the nascent division at Talpa with Wim van Dam, says: “With the expansion into adventure reality, we can further grow our offering across this genre and showcase our international production capability, as well as welcoming new concepts to bolster our creative partnerships.

“Adventure reality is a broad genre ranging from reality formats in exotic or hard-to-reach locations, trail shows to travel. What makes our content unique is the fact we can create scale and then offer this at lower pricing in production hubs. We have just recorded our first adventure reality show for Talpa Studios in the heart of the wildlife of Botswana. The content is unique because we were able to produce the show among lions and elephants, and really in the wild. With our contacts and experiences built up in the past 15 years all over the world, we are able to think bigger, out-of-the-box and create shows in exceptional places.”

The news last month came soon after Talpa had established a new division targeting the action-adventure space earlier in the year, with its first commission coming from the Netherlands. SBS6 commissioned Camping the Wilderness, an eight-part series that sees four families stay in a campsite in the wilderness of Botswana, where they win cash prizes for photographing wild animals. Camping the Wilderness will premiere on SBS6 on New Year’s Day and will also be available on streamer Amazon Prime Video.

“Announcing the launch of Camping the Wilderness, the first project from our dedicated adventure reality team, is incredibly exciting for us,” says Maarten Meijs, CEO of Talpa Studios. “With this new adventure reality show, we are broadening our range of formats and at the same time emphasising our international production capabilities.”

Also in the news lately is Alone, a US survival experiment format that German broadcaster RTL is adapting for its RTL+ streaming service in the German-speaking market, having seen huge success with a similar show called 7 vs Wild. The German deal for Alone followed recent local production agreements for the format in France, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Japan and Korea.

Distributed by A+E Media Group, Alone sees contestants dropped into an isolated wilderness where they must survive entirely by themselves and film their own progress. The format premiered on The History Channel in the US in 2015. In Australia, SBS has also picked up the first season of Alone’s most recent commission, Alone UK, along with Youku (Alibaba) in China, TVNZ+ in New Zealand and The History Channel in the US.

Regarding the success of Alone, Ninder Billing, A+E Media Group’s VP of international unscripted coproductions, told delegates at last month’s Content London how a partnership with ITV Studios has propelled it to the next level. “It’s quite an old format but it has gone gangbusters in the last three or four years with new territories including Australia and the UK. ITV Studios is now a key partner in nurturing the global success of the production.”

She summed up the tone of the Formats & Factual strand of the event when she said: “These are collaborative times, we want to work with you as much as you want to work with us. How can we work with you to make the best ideas? What can we add to the equation?”

Another big talking point at Content London was spinning off unscripted formats from scripted IP, with some recent examples sitting squarely in the action-adventure space. Amazon Prime Video’s 007: Road to a Million, for instance, was spun out of the James Bond movie franchise and will see contestants pair up and take part in a variety of challenges that test endurance and intelligence at different locations across the world that have been featured in the Bond franchise.

The winners will take home a £1m (US$1.3m) cash prize. But the broadcasters and platforms behind such shows, delivering big screen action at a fraction of the price, look set to being the real winners in terms of audience and advertisers.

US-based streamer Netflix has already commissioned a second season of reality competition format Squid Game: The Challenge. This came after the show, coproduced by UK prodcos Studio Lambert (Traitors) and The Garden (Alone) and based on hit South Korean drama Squid Game, rated in Netflix’s Top 10 shows list in 93 countries.

Australian free-to-air broadcaster Seven Network is also getting into the unscripted action-adventure space, this time with a fresh twist. A new format was announced at Seven’s 2024 Upfronts event in Sydney this month that will mix adventure with animals. Former Bondi Vet star Dr Chris Brown will also host Once in A Lifetime, a new animal adventure series where he takes Australian entertainment personalities around the world as his veterinary assistant.

As the action-adventure genre evolves and develops to reach new audiences, watch out for more twists like this, as producers marry it together with other known audience drivers.