Ideas for television programmes can come from the most unlikely sources. David Chase created The Sopranos in part because he was in therapy to deal with his strained relationship with his mother. Lost came to be because the head of ABC wanted a dramatic version of the CBS reality show Survivor. And the forthcoming Whac-a-Mole series was created when someone looked at a Whac-a-Mole game and decided to make a TV programme about it.
Which is to say that there is going to be a Whac-a-Mole TV show. Based on the popular 45-year-old arcade game, the show will feature people hitting moles with a mallet and that’s probably about it. Although it doesn’t yet have a home, the Whac-a-Mole show is being developed by Mattel Television and Fremantle. According to the Hollywood Reporter, it will take the form of “an elimination competition in which opposing teams face challenges that include a life-sized Whac-a-Mole, races and obstacle courses with a surprising twist”. I’m no expert, but at a guess the surprising twist will involve some nightmarish combination of moles and hammers.
Really, it’s the “life-sized” element that excites me most about this show. It’s all so tantalisingly vague, isn’t it? What, exactly, is a life-sized Whac-a-Mole? It can’t be something spectacular and huge, can it, because that isn’t how big a real-life Whac-a-Mole is. And it can’t just be the size of a Whac-a-Mole game because that isn’t visually very interesting. No, if this claim is to hold any water, the life-sized Whac-a-Mole will have to be the size of about 16 moles. Sixteen life-sized, lifelike moles that members of the public will be forced to bludgeon with a hammer for money. You can sign me up on the spot. It sounds brilliant. I’m not joking. I would watch that.
Sure, it’s easy to mock the Whac-a-Mole show for its dearth of original creative ideas. But let’s not be picky. Games have long formed the basis of TV programmes. There have been gameshows based on Monopoly, and on Trivial Pursuit. Pictionary has been utilised in shows like Fast Draw, Win Lose or Draw and two different gameshows that bore the name Pictionary.
And the train keeps gathering steam. As well as the guaranteed international blockbuster Whac-a-Mole show, Mattel is also about to launch a gameshow based on Uno. If that’s a success, and it will be, all bets are off. Imagine a beefed up Kerplunk show, in which players have to gingerly remove logs to stop a pile of boulders from toppling down an atrium and crushing all their prizes. Or a Rebound game, in which people play an unnecessarily high-speed version of Shuffleboard that is overwhelmingly likely to result in moderate to severe injury.
Given a frightening level of prominence on the Mattel Games website at the moment is a monstrosity called Flushin’ Frenzy, where players have to pump a plunger into a toilet bowl a certain amount of times to prevent a grinning, lifelike, sentient human turd with teeth and fingers from suddenly popping out of the toilet. Now, tell me that wouldn’t make a great show. They could even have celebrity guests dressed up as the poo. Imagine how giddy a studio audience would be if they were suddenly greeted by the sight of, say, Rita Ora bursting out of a giant toilet, singing her latest song while smeared with excrement. This has Saturday night written all over it.
We are powerless to stop this. We now live in a universe where, like it or not, there is going to be a Whac-a-Mole TV show. The only questions anyone should have about this are: “How quickly can they make it?” and “Please can I be on it?”
