Think The Masked Singer is mad? Wait till they screen The Masked DANCER!
IT’S the ‘bonkers’ family show that has stormed the Saturday night primetime TV schedules.
Now ITV bosses hope to replicate the success of The Masked
Singer with a dance version of their ratings hit, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. ITV’s Head of Entertainment Katie Rawcliffe is in talks to buy the rights to screen the US format The Masked Dancer in the UK.
ITV’s Masked Singer has trounced BBC1 rival The Greatest Dancer’s viewing figures with 6.5 million tuning in for the first episode.
Viewers have watched with glee as panellists Rita Ora and Jonathan Ross try to guess the identities of singing celebrities hidden by eye-catching costumes, with a pharaoh mask concealing former Home Secretary Alan Johnson and a tree hiding ex-football star Teddy Sheringham.
A channel insider told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Everyone at ITV is thrilled with how successful The Masked Singer has been, so it seems a nobrainer to buy in a sequel.’
The Masked Dancer, in which celebrities perform unique dances in an outfit that hides their identities, started off as a spoof on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in the US shortly after season one of the American version of The Masked Singer, which originated in South Korea, was launched last January by the Fox network.
Meanwhile, the head costume maker of ITV’s The Masked Singer has revealed that the show’s 12 outfits, which include an octopus and unicorn, took 5,000 man hours to make.
Tim Simpson, who is just one of six people to know who the celebrities wearing the costumes are before their i dentities are revealed on the show, spent more than a year creating them.
The zoology graduate said: ‘I wasn’t given any names when I was making the costumes. I was instead given their measurements and used models. But I was there when they were fitted. Unicorn wouldn’t stop running up and down. It was a joy to see.’