Johnny de Mol returns to television in a surprising way after the demise of HLF8: he will present the summer quiz De Kwis met Ballen. “Rob Kemps was passed over for this.”
The first job for Johnny de Mol after taking HLF8 off the air is the new TV show De Kwis met Ballen. Five candidates float above a swimming pool. Is a player on a correct answer? Then nothing is wrong and the ball stops in time. If the answer is wrong, the ball mercilessly slams the player into the pool.
‘Rob too loud’
This sounds somewhat superficial and childish; then it suits Rob Kemps better, doesn’t it? After two years he already ended up on the reserve bench at SBS 6. “When I saw the program idea, I thought: this also suits Rob Kemps, actually. Would they have passed it?”, said Telegraaf reporter Jordi Versteegden in the podcast Strictly Private.
Colleague Evert Santegoeds then: “Yes, clear, isn’t it? I think they were really shocked by Rob Kemps when he was at that fair. The Wheel, yes. That no one said to him then: ‘Don’t shout like that, Rob.’ Before it came on TV, I think they were all recorded, so there was nothing left to do.”
Spectacle show
According to Evert, Rob has been passed because of his screaming in The Wheel. “That was not the flashiest start of Rob Kemps. I’d rather see him in a program like Chansons, where he just makes that huge trick of his very small, than he’s going to turn it on in a big spectacle show. But Johnny has to work too, right?”
The tweeting opinion maker Mies thinks it’s a miss on Johnny’s part. She doesn’t understand it at all tweets she. “What possesses a Johnny de Mol, who has more money than even his grandchildren can spend later, to humiliate himself so voluntarily?”
‘Back to start’
Marcel van Roosmalen agrees. He out in his podcast Another Day the feeling that Johnny is back to square one. “He is now really starting back at the base. He has to ask very simple questions and react spontaneously when someone is shot with a large ball on the edge of a swimming pool. As long as it’s going to be fun.”
Colleague Gijs Groenteman: “Now he is completely at the bottom again and he has to be rebuilt with a very simple quiz. A quiz in which people get a wet suit and are pushed into water by balls. What a long way he has to go now to get back to that old level.”
What does Tina think?
And what does viewing figures professor Tina Nijkamp think? She writes: “Oh dear. SBS 6 will quiz again with a format from the creative team of John de Mol. As long as that goes well in terms of viewing figures… Last summer, things went wrong with Vier Is Te Veel and Het Best Answer. This time a quiz with balls and a swimming pool.”
It must be a sponsor thing, says Tina. “Think big and sponsored by the Lotto perhaps? I’m curious what Frank Evenblij thinks of the title: in 2020 and 2022 he presented a self-invented quiz for BNNVARA with the same name, only with ‘quiz’ instead of ‘quiz’.”
The Kwis met Ballen starts on Saturday 24 June at 21.30 on SBS 6.