Keeping it real

It is the moment of truth for 11 Dutch celebrities. They are fidgeting nervously under dramatic lighting and sinister flags as they wait for their cue to start throwing accusations of duplicitous behaviour at each other. Glued to a monitor in a room nearby, three TV executives from Israel watch as a contestant breaks down in tears. They don’t understand a word but are gripped and throw questions at Kevin Soares, the executive vice-president for international formats at idtv, the Amsterdam-based production company that first created the programme. Why is she crying? How do they prepare the contestants? Can they control what is going to happen? 

Monocle is on set for the filming of the tense round-table scene in The Traitors, the hit psychological reality TV show in which a group of people are isolated in a castle and must root out the traitors in their midst. Israel is the latest in more than 20 countries to buy the format. Soares knows the series’ universal appeal better than most: he has travelled to 11 Traitors sets around the world to help develop local versions. “It goes back to the basic core of being human: if we can’t tell the difference between good and evil, lie or truth, we become unbalanced,” he says. “Even though there are a lot of cultural differences, fundamentally we react to certain situations in the same way – so wherever you watch the show you can relate.” 

The visitors from Israel nod approvingly as Soares explains their hands-off approach with the contestants. “Reality is better than anything scripted,” says Roee Strikovski of Fremantle, the production company that owns the studios that will be making the series in Israel. “And it works with this maybe even better than Big Brother.”

The Traitors is the latest in a long line of Dutch TV formats that have gone on to enjoy huge international success, in some cases changing the television landscape forever. Streaming services might have opened up a whole world of content that can be watched across different countries without the need to create national versions but The Traitors is proof that there is still space for traditional broadcasters to apply a tried-and-trusted formula of gripping storytelling, strong execution, great timing – and a little bit of luck. 

The Dutch have long thrived in this genre. Many say that the country invented reality TV: in 1991 a producer put seven strangers in a student house in Amsterdam and filmed them over several months. Nummer 28 ran for one season before quietly disappearing. The following year mtv did the same with The Real World, putting seven New Yorkers in a Soho loft: its blend of in-house tensions and Gen X angst captivated viewers – and a new genre was born. The reality format evolved further in 1999 when former Dutch footballer-turned-media mogul John de Mol finally found a network willing to take a chance on his new idea, Big Brother. Now the human lab rats were to be denied access to the outside world and would perform tasks and games in front of a rapt TV audience. The rest, of course, is history. Big Brother went global and De Mol ended up creating some of the most iconic formats of the past two decades, first with his company Endemol and then with Talpa, the content creator he founded in 2017. “Big Brother came out when the internet was starting to boom and the idea that you could be watched all the time by everyone was quite influential,” says Alex Mazereeuw, a TV columnist for Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. “That is the brilliance of De Mol – good marketing and good timing.”

De Mol was also following in a long tradition of innovation and entrepreneurship in the Netherlands, a mercantile nation that has always punched above its weight on the international stage. Making things and selling them – think tulip mania in the Dutch Golden Age – is in the nation’s DNA, as is making the most of limited resources and soaking up myriad influences. Geertje Hoek, managing director at Talpa Concepts, also sees something in the nation’s character – renowned for its liberal social values and open-mindedness – that makes the Dutch receptive to being guinea pigs for some of the more outrageous ideas. “The Netherlands is a good market for trying out new formats,” she says. “It’s also quite a representative market. History has proven that if something does well here, it’s likely to do well in some of the other big territories.”

The golden years of Dutch reality TV saw formats push the boundaries of taste; in 2005, De Mol made headlines with the pilot of a show in which a woman searched for a sperm donor. But most of his hits were relatively family-friendly formats, including Fear Factor, Deal or No Deal and The Voice. The latter was De Mol’s last big international hit – more than a decade ago. Since then his reputation has taken a serious hit: last year a female contestant on the Dutch version of The Voice accused cast members of sexual harassment. The show was taken off air and two of the accused men are now being prosecuted. This came amid already growing global concerns about the vulnerability of reality-TV contestants, with networks toning down their risk-taking and backing safer formats. 

It was into this fallow period that The Traitors arrived in March 2021. Dutch TV creative Marc Pos had an idea to base a show around the story of The Batavia, a Dutch East India Company vessel that was shipwrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629, prompting mutinous behaviour as the stricken crew fought for the ship’s bounty. He sought the help of one of the biggest Dutch TV production companies,

idtv (owned in turn by UK-based All3media group), and in 2016 started working with Jasper Hoogendoorn, then a concept developer for the company. Hoogendoorn, now idtv’s creative director, immediately saw the potential of the format. “It is so interesting to see what an amount of money and peer pressure can do to bring out the bad side of human behaviour,” he says. 

But the networks were not convinced. One of the most popular formats in the Netherlands at the time was The Mole, where the identity of the mole remains a mystery to the audience. The central concept in The Traitors – in which the audience knows who the traitors are from the start – seemed revolutionary in its potential to strip the audience of suspense (and their ability to figure out who the traitors are themselves). Then, in 2020, commercial network rtl4 agreed to take a chance. When it aired in March the following year, it turned out to be the perfect show for the moment, as people were spending most of their time at home during the pandemic and conspiracy theories were flourishing. “That claustrophobic sense, the questions around who can you trust in times like these – all that anxiety is baked into the format of The Traitors,” says TV critic Mazereeuw. It was an immediate hit and within days of the first broadcast, major networks from all over the world were calling. The huge success of the UK version in late 2022, and the US one this year, sparked more excitement – and an increasing number of countries, from Finland to New Zealand, are now clamouring to create their own versions. 

The Dutch series, called DeVerraders, has now run for three full seasons and two specials. Monocle joins the filming of a Halloween special at a château in the north of the country where celebrity contestants plot and conspire on a set decked out in skeletons and pumpkins, conspicuously ignored by the crew and other visitors, who are under strict instructions to respect the contestants’ alternate reality. “It’s a psychological bubble,” says Soares, and a distinctly sinister one too. At the end of a manicured lawn, screams and howls suddenly come from a greenhouse: the snake handlers waiting outside are a hint to the task within. 

Is this show proof that a renaissance is afoot for Dutch TV formats? It has certainly given a renewed confidence to the big players such as Talpa and idtv, and emboldened a host of other production houses to try new formats. Marc Pos has since left idtv to create his own company and there is much anticipation about his next project, while production houses Vincent TV Producties, Sky High TV and Tuvalu Media continue to create staggering amounts of reality formats, with varying levels of success. 

Mazereeuw worries that there are still too many copycat formats on the market but Hoogendoorn believes that The Traitors has spurred both renewed international interest and innovation. He talks excitedly about idtv’s next project, The Unknown, which he describes as a psychological adventure reality show. He can’t give too much away: the first episode airs in the Netherlands in May and they are building hype with a slow reveal but it involves ordinary people being plunged into extraordinary situations, all the while being controlled by a mysterious puppet master. With stunning locations and plenty of twists, it sounds like a combination of Squid Game and Race Across the World, with some unmistakable Traitors elements thrown in. International rights have already been sold to two countries, which is unusual for a show that has not even aired. Hoogendoorn says that the central premise is asking people to decide whether to take a safe course in life or to try something daring and unknown. “After the pandemic, we all have moments when we think, ‘Is this the life that I want to live or do I dare to choose another path?’,” he says. “A lot of people dream about changing their life but don’t dare to do it. That’s the main idea behind this format.” 

Capturing the zeitgeist is tricky, however, and often happens by accident. The fast-changing nature of global politics and the programmes’ long lead times can also throw up curve balls. Talpa’s much-hyped Million Dollar Island, in which 100 contestants live on a tropical island for two months to vie for a €1m prize, must have seemed like a great idea during the fog of the pandemic, when everyone was dreaming of sunnier times. It eventually premiered in early March 2022, just weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The images of swimsuit-clad contestants fighting over food to win huge sums of money jarred with footage of Ukrainian farmers wondering whether they could still feed the nation amid the Russian onslaught. Talpa Concept’s Hoek remains upbeat about the format, however, and says that the Australian version will be filming soon. She talks about today’s audience seeking comforting family content to escape social media and worrying global news. There is also fatigue with ubiquitous influencers and a move towards more compassionate reality TV. 

While The Traitors certainly puts its contestants through the psychological wringer, its DNA feels closer to family board games and wholesome whodunits. Innovation and risk-taking, it seems, don’t mean finding someone willing to give birth on live TV or inventing sadistic mental tortures for wannabe celebs; it can be as simple as having faith in the people in front of and behind the camera. “Authenticity, real people and real emotions: that is what people want right now,” says Hoek. “It’s not just about the tricks; it’s about what you can make people feel.” 

What’s the next big export? 

1. Make Up Your Mind 

A mix of The Masked Singer and RuPaul’s Drag Race, Make Up Your Mind sees Dutch celebrities transform into drag queens and perform for two panels who compete to guess the person’s identity. It might be a show that is riffing on an existing formula but its mix of diverse contestants and high production values has made it a hit and there is global interest. 

2. The New Vermeer 

This gentle programme, pegged to the blockbuster Vermeer exhibition running at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum this year, asks professional painters and aspiring artists to create works inspired by the Dutch master’s notebooks. It has been an instant success in the Netherlands, with the cast of amateur artists capturing the public’s imagination. 

3. AvaStars 

When production on this new John de Mol format was announced two years ago, the concept of Dutch celebrities pairing up with virtual versions of themselves to compete in a talent show might have seemed ahead of its time. But two years is a long time in technology and when the programme finally hit the screens in February, it was widely panned for a visual style that columnist Alex Mazereeuw likens to “Playstation characters from 2005”. He admits, however, that he can’t stop watching. Could this be a slow-burning “so bad that it’s actually good” hit? 

2. The New Vermeer 

This gentle programme, pegged to the blockbuster Vermeer exhibition running at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum this year, asks professional painters and aspiring artists to create works inspired by the Dutch master’s notebooks. It has been an instant success in the Netherlands, with the cast of amateur artists capturing the public’s imagination. 

3. AvaStars 

When production on this new John de Mol format was announced two years ago, the concept of Dutch celebrities pairing up with virtual versions of themselves to compete in a talent show might have seemed ahead of its time. But two years is a long time in technology and when the programme finally hit the screens in February, it was widely panned for a visual style that columnist Alex Mazereeuw likens to “Playstation characters from 2005”. He admits, however, that he can’t stop watching. Could this be a slow-burning “so bad that it’s actually good” hit? 

4. Marble Mania 

Talpa’s surprise hit from 2021. The show, inspired by a Youtube channel, sees Dutch celebrities race marbles on a huge track. Reflecting a shift towards gentler, simpler content, Talpa’s Hoek says that it premiered during “troubled times when people longed for feel-good entertainment that they could watch with their family and that allowed them to escape reality for a little bit”. Versions have already been filmed in France and Belgium, and it returns to Dutch screens later this year. 

5. The Floor 

Another Talpa production, this quiz show aired in the Netherlands this year. Its usp is the number of contestants, with 100 quiz fanatics standing on led boards and duelling each other to whittle down the numbers. Designed with social media-friendly snippets in mind, The Floor has now sold internationally. 

6. A Year of Your Life 

Despite numerous attempts, no reality format has matched the winning formula of Big Brother. But that doesn’t stop production houses from trying, and Endemol successor Talpa is currently testing a new spin: making it longer. While Big Brother contestants only had to put up with their fellow housemates for a few months, the 40 strangers in A Year of Your Life are tasked with enduring each other’s company for 365 days. Billed as the longest reality game show ever, those who make it to the end can win €1m.