Thinkbox
When Jimmy Carr was first offered Dave’s new comedy reality gameshow Battle in the Box, in which contestants are locked in a confined space and have to win games for food, he didn’t hesitate.
‘When I was asked to take part, I initially said, ‘No. That sounds like a nightmare,’ joked Carr. And then it turned out he was being asked to present it, not take part in it.
‘Of course I’ll host. I’m not going in there. I’m not an idiot. No offence to our contestants, but what were they thinking?’
Battle in the Box
Battle in the Box is a departure for the UKTV channel in a number of ways. Its first foray into Korean formats, the show pits two pairs of celebrity contestants against each other in a 16 metre by 3 metre box, divided by a movable wall.
Contained in there for 20 hours and initially equipped with the barest of bare essentials, they are subject to all manner of challenges - set via video link by the singular Carr - which enable them to win food and increasingly outlandish luxuries.
And each time they win they are also able to push the wall further into their rivals’ living space, increasing their room for manoeuvre at the expense of the pair on the other side. Never has the divide between haves and have nots been such fun to watch.
‘The players’ patience is tested to its limits. Everyone has a game plan until they’re sleep deprived and driven to distraction - which is when the good bits happen!’ said Carr.
‘You won’t be tuning in to watch people have a pleasant time. There are shows for that, but Battle in the Box scratches a different itch.’
The 8 x 60-minute series achieves the difficult feat of feeling both very much like a Dave show while at the same time looking unlike anything you’ve seen on the channel before.
Producer Interstellar brought the Korean show to the attention of Mark Iddon, senior commissioning editor, comedy entertainment, UKTV, at a time when he was keen to expand the channel’s comedy entertainment offering beyond the core panel shows with which it so successfully made its name.
‘I had been saying to quite a few people, look, what would be really great - we’ve never had a dating show, we’ve never done reality - but what would it look like if Dave did?’ says Iddon.
‘This is a play for us. Reality on Dave has never been done before and from a conceptual point of view this would be ambitious if it was on any channel. It’s another big noisy show which I like, and it felt like the right way Dave would do a big broad fun kind of show.’
The Dave adaptation has evolved significantly from the Korean original which was set outdoors in a nondescript building in a quarry, had no presenter, and allowed its contestants to leave at any time.
Dave’s version ramps up the fun (with Jimmy Carr) and the jeopardy (Carr again!) and transfers the action to a rather futuristic looking box with fixed rig cameras on a soundstage in which contestants rapidly lose track of time and, just occasionally, their senses.
‘It’s one of those shows where the basic premise is so simple and so clear you immediately just get it,’ says Jamie Ormerod, executive producer and creative director of Interstellar.
‘There were touch points where it’s got elements of Taskmaster, elements of Big Brother, but never quite have you seen this exact formation before and the moving wall is a stroke of genius by [Seoul-based format agency] Something Special.’
The challenges are all new, exhaustively played out in the production company’s boardroom to make sure they would work in whatever portion of the 48 square metre box each team of contestants had available to them, depending on how well they fared in previous games.
‘We produced it up visually, and wanted the games to be as funny and interesting as possible. We wanted to fast track the fatigue and the fun,’ says Interstellar managing director and executive producer, David Williams, a veteran of Big Brother.
‘Dave were very keen to have a big name [as a host] and it was a really good call because it gave it a whole other personality and dimension to the box and to the games, and gave Jimmy the opportunity to be brilliantly funny and that was quite a big shift in terms of the editorial.’
As well as a fresh format the show brings new faces to Dave outside of its traditional ‘funny people’ circle, non-comedy names such as Joe Swash and Jamie Laing, to go alongside more familiar channel faces such as Katherine Ryan, Seann Walsh, Ellie Taylor and Guz Khan.
Indeed, such is the flexible nature of the format that you can imagine it working with people entirely outside of the comedy world.
‘That’s what’s exciting about it. We came out going, you could put anyone in this box,’ says UKTV’s Iddon.
‘I like that a format can flex. The actual comedy came from the human experience of being challenged and the natural competitiveness [that comes out of it]. It allows anyone to create really entertaining content. It would be fascinating.’
* Stream the whole series of Battle in the Box free on U on Tuesday 16 July. Watch Battle in the Box live on U&Dave from 9pm Tuesday 16 July
* U is UKTV’s new masterbrand, uniting its family of free-to-air channels and its free streaming service. Launching on 16 July, the move will see current streaming service UKTV Play transition to U, and UKTV’s family of free-to-air channels will become U&Dave, U&DRAMA, U&YESTERDAY and U&W