Thinking Inside The Box

In an enviable nod to recycling, Sheffield band Living In A Box had a hit in 1987 with their song ‘Living In A Box’ from their album, er, Living In A Box. This essay is not about cardboard boxes as mentioned in the song but about the attraction of boxes and/or confined spaces to producers of TV formats over the years.

A number of new or recent events have prompted this essay: Next month (October 2024), Norwegian production company Seefood TV will be taking their new format ‘The Box’ for sale to international buyers at MIPCOM in Cannes. The format, scheduled to transmit early in 2025 on TV2 in Norway, is a competition-based reality series where 12 celebrities live together until they are each placed in a separate box. The box is only slightly larger than an old fashioned public telephone booth (ask your parents, kids !) and they have no idea where they are and what to expect until the door to the box opens, and they find themselves in the middle of a challenge. They must figure out what the task is about and how to complete it - without receiving any prior hints. The challenge is the same for every contestant and, whilst one contestant is eliminated every episode, surviving contestants go back to the communal living area until the next challenge. Winner of The Box will be the person who ultimately masters the most challenges by the end of the 10-episode series.

What part, I wondered, did the boxes play in the format - surely blindfolds would have been cheaper ? In spite of what men have been told through the ages, size DOES matter. Seefood TV’s Creative Director Aleksander Herresthal: “One of the major broadcasters approached us, asking for an international format that could succeed across territories - where we were asked to remove budget constraints from the equation, and think on a grand scale”. The setting and scale of the show (shown in the picture) demonstrates the producers’ ambition :

‘The Box’ Photo copyright TV2 Norway & Seefood TV

In terms of inspiration for the idea, Covid played a part but not, as you might think, the effect of being confined to one’s house during lockdown, but rather as an extension of the contestants’ minds. Aleksander Herresthal again: “After the pandemic, many of us recognised that unpredictable events (escalating wars, climate change, advancements in AI, etc) are occurring faster than ever. This realization highlights the importance of being prepared for future changes and adapting more swiftly than ever before. The key is to think quickly while keeping calm - just as we must do in our daily lives with everything that is happening.

“This format is not really about a confined space, but more about the unknown expectations. The box serves primarily to keep the challenge hidden from the contestants, rather than the importance of them being inside the box. In some ways they’re ‘inside of their own head’ when they are in the box’.

One format where confinement of the contestant DID play a major part was ‘A Life in Prizes’ - a strand within Japanese extreme entertainment stunt magazine show Denpa Shonen that aired in January 1998. A brilliant feature-length documentary ‘The Contestant ‘ about the format and particularly its lone contestant Tomoaki Hamatsu (better known as Nasubi) is currently doing the rounds of film festivals and is available now to view on Hulu:

The Contestant - photo copyright Misfits Entertainment

The premise, in those late 90’s days when people read physical magazines and manufacturers marketed their products through competition giveaways in said magazine was a simple if somewhat baffling one: could a person survive on the winnings of free-to-enter magazine competitions ?  At the risk of spoilers, Dear Reader: he could. The premise of the strand (before the film The Truman Show came out) - which Nasubi was told was almost definitely not going to be televised but at its height attracted 30 million viewers watching every aspect of his life - required him to be broken down like some adherant of an extreme religious cult and stripped of his clothes and wordly posessions. All he had in the box-like apartment Producers put him in was a cushion, a heating element (but no utensils), a rack of magazines and hundreds of blank stamped postcards. The quest was deemed to be completed if and only when he had won a million Yen (about US$8000) worth of freebies. For the first few days whilst he - and we - waited to see if he won anything, Producers fed him on just enough crackers for him to survive. Inevitably, the first prizes that arrived were a set of car tyres, dog food and dog biscuits (which the starving Nasubi ate) before he won a bag of rice (though, with nothing to cook it in, he had to improvise).

But it was the confinement of the contestant and the growing isolation he so clearly felt that made this format dark rather than comedic and it is testament to Nasubi that he lasted just under a year before he completed the task. The door to the apartment was never locked and Producers (unbeknown to Nasubi) were installed in the apartment next door. I would really recommend checking out the documentary which, once you get over watching a man unravel before your very eyes on camera for a TV show, you’ll find out why he didn’t leave and what the effect of the ordeal was on him. As a former producer of stunt shows myself and a TV Executive in a reputationally sensitive world of social media, I wonder if, in these days of Producer’s Duty of Care and Health and Safety guidelines, could a social experiment like that of A Life In Prizes be made today? When I asked the documentary’s writer and director Clair Titley she smiled and shrugged, philosophically recalling Dr Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum)’s quote from the first 1993 Jurassic Park film:

“Your scientists were so pre-occupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should”. So yeah, it probably could get made but I hope it doesn’t.

Jimmy Carr - photo copyright UKTV

In far less psychologically disturbing box-related news, the UK’s U & Dave digital channel has just played out its first series of Battle Of The Box fronted by comedian Jimmy Carr. In this Korean format, pairs of celebrities compete with each other in various tasks where the outcome is a zero sum game: the winning pair win space taken from the losing pair. The action takes place over a full day and night so living in an enclosed space with someone else is as much an element of the format as the Taskmaster-style challenges. As host Jimmy Carr explains: “Going into the Box everyone has a game plan, until they’re hungry, sleep deprived and driven to distraction - which is when the good bits happen! Never mind going into a box, try and not look at your phone for 24 hours and see how you do. I’d defy anyone to not get quite irritable. I’d argue if you don't use your phone for 24 hours it would feel like the walls are closing in, even if they're not”. All participants are comedians or celebrities with a sense of humour so it’s probably fair to guess that no celebrity was injured physically or mentally in the making of the series.  No news as yet if another will be commissioned.

Battle Of The Box - photo copyright UKTV

The Cube - photo copyright Objective & ITV

Finally, on the subject of boxes, it’d be wrong to go past one of the biggest selling box-based formats without mentioning The Cube. Having first been piloted for - and subsequently turned down by - Channel 4, the larger commercial channel ITV took the format and aired the first episode in August 2009. The format - which was subsequently sold to over a dozen different territories - featured a series of seven games a contestant had to complete within a perspex box measuring 4m x 4m x 4m. Top prize was £250,000 and the games were relatively low-fi ones featuring ping pong balls, tokens, lit panels and the like with contestants performing aiming or timing or other hand/eye co-ordination challenges. The contestant started with nine lives and lost one for every unsuccessful attempt at a game. The contestant had to repeat the game until they either completed it or run out of lives; in the latter case, the game ended and all money is forfeited. When a contestant succeeded, they were shown a preview of the next game and could decide to either stop playing and keep their winnings or continue and risk the money. Hard to say why, in April 2022, the show was eventually officially ‘put on hiatus’ (translation: cancelled) but every format eventually runs out of steam or at very least needs a few years’ rest. The show was re-booted once so who’s to say it won’t get another shot in the future ? You’d need a crystal ball to predict the format’s future. Hmmm…a ball - now that’s an interesting shape in which to set a reality challenge competition format. Picture it: Celebrities, living in a giant goldfish bowl must try to sing/eat/act/create/make the other person laugh by using just their eyelids and………….

ENDS