After television queen in temporary rest Linda de Mol had suddenly launched a full attack on the TV critics in an angry open letter, Sunday evening it was time to watch how family channel SBS 6 filled the Linda void.
Wendy van Dijk turned out to be the kick-off of the fourth season of Which of the three, the legendary panel show that was revived in 2020 on the most enjoyable channel in the Netherlands. Van Dijk introduced the show as ‘the only investigative program in which the perpetrators are received with applause, and crime are heavily rewarded’. Any nods to the personnel policy at Talpa were of course omitted.
Of course you have to laugh, as witnessed by the ‘four-headed lie detector’ of castle lord Martien Meiland, horse friend Britt Dekker, joker Najib Amhali and pleasant disruptor Raven van Dorst. The format of the 1963 TV game is still rock solid: three people pretend to be the same person with a certain profession. The panel’s job is to find out who is telling the truth. The panel show is almost ready for its sixtieth (!) anniversary, and in the past was mainly a hit by popular panel members such as Albert Mol, André van Duin and of course especially Martine Bijl.
Now your TV millennial on duty is the last to fall into TV nostalgia, but let’s just say a touch of Bijlsian irony was sorely missed in this SBS 6 reincarnation. The modern setting especially invited to a game of wetting. Najib to an auctioneer: ‘Ever had a nail file done?’ Martien to a midwife: ‘I have so many questions. It’s quite a labor.’ The laugh track saw that it was good.
Between that seemingly never-ending parade of lame jokes and feignedly interesting glances, the program’s impressive history lay gathering dust in a corner of the studio. Fortunately, NPO 3 simultaneously broadcast the season finale of The most dangerous roads in the world. Those roads always turn out to be a lot less dangerous than the title suggests, but The most dangerous roads is secretly one of the most effective TV programs in the genre ‘Celebrities do a trick’. The duos are often remarkably well scouted, the conversations in the car pleasantly rippling and the surrounding images logically enviable beautiful.
Sunday it was the turn First Datesbartender Victor Abeln and presenter Iris Enthoven, who drove through the capricious south of Mexico. Enthoven knew from Abeln that he was the one bartender from First Dates and that he has beautiful blue eyes. Abeln had no idea who he would end up in the car with, because “he doesn’t follow what’s happening online.” But the less prior knowledge, the better. After all, it doesn’t get any more exciting than almost driving against traffic once, so the program mainly relies on the uncertain, uncomfortable dynamics between the participants.
The most dangerous roads will probably not go down in the books as a TV classic, but at least looks a lot more pleasant than the soulless reincarnation of Which of the three. if The most dangerous roads had been an SBS program, Martien Meiland would probably have sat in the back seat. After all, imagine that it would become unsociable.