From eatings strange foods to feats of endurance, these 8 television game shows will put you to the test! Watch what these contestants will do to win the ultimate prize. Support our Patreon today:
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The producers of ‘Solitary’ on the Fox Reality Channel labelled it as a social experiment meant to determine the mental and physical endurance of its contestants. It’s probably among the most psychologically strenuous game shows on this list. The contestants were placed in solitary confinement for a number of weeks, without any timepieces or environmental cues, such as daylight or moonlight, to indicate time.
40 children, aged 8 to 15, had to create a functioning society, with almost no help from adults. It might sound like the plot from ‘Lord of the Flies’ but it’s actually the premise for ‘Kid Nation’, a show that aired on the CBS network for a single season in 2007. The implications of the show generated much controversy, with some comparing it to child abuse. Some argued that the younger children might not be able to cope with the emotional stress, and that their parents might have pressured them to participate.
Killer Karaoke aired for two seasons on truTV between 2012 and 2014. Jackass star Steve-O was the host of the first season and singer Mark McGrath replaced him for the second season. The show was essentially a blend of torture and singing. Contestants had to try to sing while enduring things like getting shocked, receiving a strip wax treatment, putting their heads in cases with various animals or walking through a cactus maze while wearing blurry vision glasses. In one event called Bite Club, they had to sing wearing a padded suit as guard dogs kept attacking them.
Much like the name would suggest, ‘Man Vs Beast’ was a game show in which animals and people competed against each other. It was the brainchild of executive producer Eric Schotz, who won 9 Emmys throughout his career. Despite his success ‘Man Vs Beast’ is arguably his worst project to date. There were two specials which aired on the Fox television network and that were heavily panned both by critics and animal rights groups. It was considered to be dangerous and ethically reprehensible. A critic described it as ‘another sign of an impending apocalypse’. One of the matchups involved a professional eater who lost a hot dog eating contest against a Kodiak bear.
‘Grand Theft Auto’ is a videogame that can provide a fair amount of entertainment, but most people would be glad it’s only a game. However, in 1997, Russian TV producers saw the potential in bringing the concept of evading the law in stolen vehicles to life. In each episode of ‘The Intercept’ contestants had to steal a car with the help of assistants in Moscow. From that point on they had to do their best to evade the police for 35 minutes. If they were successful, the contestants got to keep the car or they were awarded a cash prize.
‘Hurl!’ premiered in the US in July, 2008, in the US, on the now-defunct G4 channel. In its 12 years of existence G4 featured shows that focused primarily on young adults. While binge eating and vomiting are normally the signs of an eating disorder, this was the main premise for competition in Hurl! The contestants were told by the host that the winner was the person who ate the most and hurled the least, when, in reality, it was the person who hurled the last that claimed the $1,000 cash prize. The crew that ran the show was dressed in hazmat suits, complete with gas masks. The five contestants would begin the game by eating a large amount of food that had been placed on deli scales.
By now, Japan is famous for its outrageous game shows but only one would so casually walk the line between torture and entertainment. Aired in the 1980s, ‘Za Gaman’ or ‘The Endurance’ was a televised program in which students from various universities competed against each other. They tried to withstand a series of experiences that were not only unpleasant but quite disturbing.
DERO was a Japanese game show that aired from December 2009 to March 2011 and served as the inspiration for Exit, which premiered in the US in June 2013 but only featured six episodes. Four teams of two contestants each competed to escape several rooms by completing puzzles or winning brain games. The grand prize was $10,000 and the show pretended that the losing contestants could face deadly circumstances. It was meant purely for entertainment but, by the looks of some of the rooms, this wasn’t an entirely absurd concept. In the ‘Beam Room’ contestants would stand on metal beams above a seemingly bottomless pit. As the 6-foot planks slowly retracted they had to solve a series of puzzles to avoid falling.
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