BIG BROTHER IS
Michael Idato
Big Brother Australia is set to fill the gap left by beloved reno show The Block NZ. The reboot of the iconic reality format, which was first announced by Australia’s Seven Network in October, will premiere on Sunday June 28 at 7pm on Three.
Episodes will also air on Mondays and Tuesdays at 7.30pm.
The coveted timeslot would have belonged to The Block NZ, but production of the local show was put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic and the level 4 lockdown, and Three later announced it would have to be postponed until 2021.
Another Three reality show, Dancing With The Stars NZ, was also scrapped for 2020 due to the uncertainty around coronavirus.
Big Brother Australia first aired in 2001 and ran for eight seasons before it was cancelled in 2008.
It was picked up by another network in 2012 but only lasted for three more seasons.
The latest iteration of the show is being billed as a ‘‘whole new game’’.
The new format sees 20 contestants – aged between 19 and 62 – live together for six weeks in a purpose-built house fitted with cameras and microphones.
The original Big Brother mansion, located in the Dreamworld theme park on the Gold Coast, was destroyed in a fire last year.
In the revamped show, hosted by Sonia Kruger, housemates compete in nomination challenges which give them the power to nominate three of their fellow housemates for eviction. Remaining housemates then cast votes to evict one of the three nominees.
The winner will be decided by the Australian public in a live finale that is set to air in late July. New Zealand viewers will be three weeks behind, as the show launched in Australia on June 8.
When the Big Brother format was first conceived by Dutch television producer John de Mol, it was titled De Gouden Kooi (The Golden Cage) and hoped to show what would happen if you trapped a group of strangers in a house together and filmed the outcome.
As a television format it asked an intriguing question. But in the aftermath of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the audience has been given a taste of life under lockdown, the new reboot of Australia’s Big Brother lands in a unique place: a case of art imitating life.
‘‘I think it’d be great if we all had our own diary room, a confessional booth that we could go and talk to Big Brother about our fears and how we’re all going crazy through a pandemic,’’ producer Amelia Fisk says. ‘‘The notion of being stuck in a house, cut off from society, and that pressure cooker and what happens to you, I think we’ve all experienced that over the last few months.
‘‘And we haven’t been asked to play a game, we haven’t been asked to do tasks for food, but I think there is something quite unique that we’ve all been through,’’ Fisk adds. ‘‘We’re being hermetically sealed by civilisation, so I think there’ll be more of an interest to see how do people adapt if they can’t do anything else?’’
Of course, de Mol’s concept would eventually take its name from the all-seeing totalitarian leader in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four and, after a lawsuit from Orwell’s estate that was eventually settled on undisclosed terms, the format would go on to become one of the most successful in the world.
In Australia it premiered on the Ten Network in 2001, airing on New Zealand screens the same year. It lasted nine seasons, including a season of Celebrity Big Brother. Nine network produced three seasons, between 2012 and 2014.
And it is now being revamped by the Seven Network and hosted by Sonia Kruger, to spearhead the network’s repositioning under newly installed CEO James Warburton.
Production on the series began at the end of February and wrapped (excluding the show’s planned live finale) just before Easter.
As the Covid-19 pandemic emerged as a global crisis in early March, Fisk says the production team had to make decisions ‘‘day by day’’. In the same way production on the US Big Brother was halted momentarily during 9/11, a decision was taken to inform the housemates of the crisis in mid-March.
‘‘Our number one priority was to ensure that their family and friends were completely safe and well, so we were in contact with them on a daily basis,’’ Fisk says. ‘‘But at a certain point, duty of care steps in, and it’s what’s right. Their lives would be affected when they would get out [of the house]. That was the reason we decided to tell them. We were very honest with the housemates and I think that they appreciated that,’’ Fisk says.
The show also paused production for 48 hours when it was discovered a crew member had come into contact with someone who had tested positive for Covid-19. Production resumed when testing came back negative.
Fisk came to the series with a couple of obvious qualifications: she worked on the UK versions of the series in 2004 and 2005, and then returned to Australia to
The reboot of the series changes a number of key elements of the show. The daily shows are prefilmed now rather than airing live with packages, and the housemates are allowed to discuss nominations, eviction and form clearer alliances in the house, a change that brings the format closer in structure to the US Big Brother, where such discussions are a key part of the game, and even Survivor, where the narrative is driven by the making and breaking of alliances.
‘‘The audience want more from their episodes, they want outcome, they want carry-through, they want a fast-paced format,’’ Fisk says.
‘‘So we have taken lots of inspiration from the US and the Canadian formats of Big Brother to bring more game into this version. And having the housemates vote each other out just adds another level of purpose.
‘‘It’s not just a social experiment any more where the viewer gets to vote on who they want to win. It’s a game and it’s up to the housemates to get themselves to the end. How they play the game and what they do, what lengths they go to get to the end, will ultimately [matter to the audience] because in the end, Australia is still going to decide on who will win.’’
The winner, who will walk away with a AU$250,000 (NZ$267,500) cheque, will be decided during a live broadcast planned for July.
At that point in the competition three housemates will remain, and instead of voting each other out they will each need to effectively make a case for the television audience’s vote.
‘‘It will be live, the voting lines will still be open and our final three housemates will be able to say their plea before Australia decides,’’ Fisk says.
‘‘We’re aiming for a live grand final with as many audience members as we can. Definitely all of our cast members, I feel like [even with] restrictions, [we] will get them at least back in the same room together.’’
Because the show now lives in the postproduction edit more than as a livestream, it is able to elevate its production values to match other successful shows in the long-format, multi-night reality genre, such as Married at First Sight, The Block and MasterChef, Fisk says.
‘‘Big Brother has always been edited, it’s just now ours is a longer edit,’’ Fisk says. ‘‘We are crafting a series that can stand up against the other shows and their production values. So we’ve got a whole post [production] team that’s looking through over 66 cameras’ worth of vision.
‘‘Audience are savvy, they want more bang for their buck. So we need the production values, we need to scale, we need to create a house on the edge of the world. But then when you’re in the house, it’s very real. It’s very much like I’m sitting in that house as a housemate as well.’’
Big Brother Australia premieres 7pm Sunday June 28 on Three about three weeks behind the show in Aussie.