Marieke Elsinga has really been the hottie lately. She is only put on relatively infantile TV shows and that attracts a lot of criticism. “People just want her to flop!”
It is a risk that Marieke Elsinga takes very consciously: after the bizarre program Alles is Muziek (no one knows the title, but this is the show in which Irene Moors was pounding like a maniac on a shuffleboard), she is now doing a crazy show in which candidates are thrown off a bridge: The Jump. You can do that, but she will take up a position.
No depth
At the start of her career as a solo presenter, Marieke established herself as the face of feather-light entertainment. And that leads to criticism, notes her former Boulevard colleague Luuk Ikink. He agrees The BLVD Podcast: “Yes, there are varying comments. Also quite a lot of bad comments, especially on X.”
Did Luuk watch it himself? “Yes, I was watching on Saturday. I got stuck. Yes, it’s basically just a quiz in a fun, creative format. Then, for example, Angela de Jong says: ‘Yes, it is light as a feather.’ Yeah right. It’s just a quiz. Yes, there is no depth to it. That’s right, except for the shutters. There is no more depth.”
A lot at stake
Colleague Rob Goossens still finds The Jump a bit disappointing. “I do see some room for improvement.”
Luuk: “Yes, me too.”
What then? Rob: “I had imagined more of that bridge, because it is of course actually the bridge from Squid Game and there you really only had tiles on which you could or could not stand. And now you had to jump on one of those hatches. Then you were free again and in theory you could walk around a hatch.”
Second flop
Yet the most important ingredients of a quiz are indeed present, according to Rob. Why does Marieke receive so much criticism? “I secretly had the feeling that people online were also hoping that Marieke would have a second flop in a row and that they were looking for that.”
Luuk: “Exactly.”
Rob: “How can we pick her up so that we can say: ‘This isn’t him again.’”
A seven
Luuk then asks Rob: “Do you have a grade in your head that makes you think: well, this is what she gets from me?”
Rob: “Yes, I gave her a 7.”
Luuk falsely: “I think that’s still quite high.”
Rob: “Would you have given it lower?”
Luuk immediately corrects himself: “No, I also think a 7 indeed.”
That’s not so bad. Very collegial of the gentlemen.