Latest news with #realityseries
Daily Mail
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Producers address Bondi Rescue cancellation rumours - after domestic violence arrest of lifeguard Andrew 'Reidy' Reid
The producers of Bondi Rescue have rubbished claims that the series has been cancelled. The Channel 10 reality series has been on hiatus for 2025, but will be around for 'many years to come', producers insisted on Wednesday. Michael Cordell, creative director and co-founder of production company CJZ, told the Daily Telegraph in a statement: 'Season 18 was widely regarded as the best we've ever made and there's still plenty of important stories to tell about Bondi's professional lifeguards and the extraordinary work they do.' Cordell also responded to comments made by lifeguard Andrew 'Reidy' Reid that seemed to imply that the series may be facing the axe. 'Reidy has been off-duty for some time and isn't privy to the show's financing. We love Reidy, but he isn't best placed to be making announcements about Bondi Rescue's future,' Cordell said. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Bondi Rescue has aired on Channel Ten since 2006, clocking in an impressive 18 seasons. It follows the daily lives and death-defying adventures of lifeguards tasked with protecting Bondi Beach's swimmers and surfers. Whispers of a cancellation come after Andrew 'Reidy' Reid faced domestic violence charges late last year. In December, the star avoided a conviction for putting his hand on a woman's neck 'in a fit of alcoholic rage'. The lifeguard faced Hornsby Local Court after pleading not guilty to two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one count of common assault. According to the NCA Newswire, Magistrate Daniel Reiss dismissed both counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. However, he was found guilty of pushing a woman's neck for up to five seconds in 'an aggressive act that amounted to common assault' without proceeding to a conviction. One assault charge related to an alleged incident in November 2022, while the other allegedly took place in January 2024, over a 15-minute period. A visibly upset Reid was said to have told the court 'that's not the kind of man I am' as he addressed the allegation. Both counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm were dismissed, though Reid was found to have made a 'fairly clear admission of assault' to his counsellor. Reid was handed a 12-month good behaviour bond after being found guilty of pushing the woman's neck for up to five seconds. He will also remain subject to a two-year apprehended violence order taken out in the woman's name. Reid is best known for having been a star on Bondi Rescue since the popular series first aired in 2006. He's patrolled the iconic beach for more than two decades. Last year, Reid made headlines when he rushed to the aid of injured victims stabbed by Joel Cauchi in the Westfield Bondi Junction rampage that claimed six lives. While Reid is no stranger to life and death situations, he admitted he had never before experienced anything so traumatic. 'I have seen some pretty gnarly stuff after working for 20 years on the beach, but nothing like this,' he said.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kelly Osbourne Shares 'One of The Best Ozzy Moments' Days After Dad's Death
The Fashion Police alum took to her Instagram Stories to share a sweet throwback moment from Ozzy & Jack's World Detour, the A&E reality series featuring Ozzy and her brother Jack Osbourne. Kelly Osbourne is paying tribute to her late father, rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, just days after his death. On Saturday, Kelly took to her Instagram Stories to share sweet throwback moment from Ozzy & Jack's World Detour, the A&E reality series featuring Ozzy and her brother Jack Osbourne. The clip, originally from a family road trip episode, showed Kelly and her dad dancing together. "One of the best Ozzy moments ever!" she captioned the nostalgic clip. In the video, Kelly can be seen greeting her dad in their motorhome before saying, "Morning, I got this song in my head I have to play it for you," as she cues up "Paradise" by George Ezra. The two begin dancing, swaying side by side in the cramped RV space. "I love you," Kelly tells her father. "I love you more," Ozzy replies. The Black Sabbath frontman's family confirmed his passing earlier this week on Tuesday, July 22. He was 76. "It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning," the family shared in a statement. "He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time." Two days later, Kelly addressed her father's death for the first time on social media. "I feel unhappy I am so sad," she wrote via her Instagram Story Thursday. "I lost the best friend I ever had." Just a week before Ozzy's unexpected death, Kelly had publicly clapped back at a fan who criticized her understanding of Parkinson's disease. The backlash came after she had previously denied rumors that Ozzy was "dying." "This is the s--t I wake up to," she said at the time, sharing a screenshot of a DM from a follower. "Wtf is wrong with people?" "Believe me I fully understand how this works," she continued. "Your message is incredibly rude. So firstly I want to tell you to go f--k yourself! He is not in stage 5!! That is not the way his kind of Parkinson's works." While Ozzy was diagnosed with the disease back in 2003, he first opened up publicly about is diagnosis during an interview on Good Morning America in 2020. "It's been terribly challenging for us all," he admitted at the time. "I did my last show New Year's Eve at The Forum. Then I had a bad fall. I had to have surgery on my neck, which screwed all my nerves." Despite those challenges, Ozzy delivered one final performance just weeks before his passing on July 5, with his band, Black Sabbath, in his hometown of Birmingham, England. Following Ozzy's Back to the Beginning show, it was announced that the concert would be getting a theatrical release. The film is slated for a 2026 release. "The feature-length concert film will be a big-screen celebration of Ozzy Osbourne and the legacy of Black Sabbath, capturing the raw power and emotional weight of Ozzy's final bow in his hometown of Birmingham," Mercury Studios said in a collab post announcing the release. "Presented as a love letter to Ozzy and the pioneering sound of Black Sabbath, the theatrical release will be a distilled version of the epic all-day event held at Villa Park," added the post. "Featuring thunderous performances of War Pigs, Iron Man, and a show-stopping Paranoid, the film promises a deeply personal and electrifying farewell from the godfather of heavy metal with exclusive behind-the-scenes access and interviews from this iconic live performance." In addition to the film, Ozzy's memoir, titled, Last Rites, is also set to be released posthumously in the coming year.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I would be terrible at this!': inside the fiendish TV guessing game whose players have no idea where they are
Outside a cinema in east London sits an absolute beast of a bus. It is jet black from wheel wells to roof, the windows are obscured by metal plates and it is so massive rock stars might kip in it prior to hopping on stage and yelling: 'Hello Milton Keynes!' Essentially, it looks like a gothic Megabus commissioned by Alice Cooper. It does, however, have one key design flaw: it's impossible to see out of. Once you're inside, you will have no idea where you are going. For the next five weeks, expect to see a lot of this vehicle. It's the star of the BBC's latest big reality series, Destination X. Based on a Belgian hit, it sees 13 contestants ferried around Europe in total ignorance of their location, with the worst at identifying it being eliminated. Viewers are encouraged to guess along as its OTT challenges see contestants locked in boxes in village squares, peeping through a tiny window to work out where they are, or being whisked up a snow-topped mountain and made to hunt for clues while dangling from a rope 2,000 metres above sea level. Given that they spend an entire month living and sleeping on a coach together, there are points where cabin fever-ravaged contestants become so suspicious of each other that heated arguments flare up. It is, essentially, The Traitors meets Race Across the World – hosted by Rob Brydon. Today, I am its newest contestant. For the next couple of hours, I will be joining Brydon and a handful of other first-time players onboard the 'X bus' for a whistlestop blind tour of London following a quick screening of the show at Hoxton's Curzon cinema. While this may lack the scale of a pan-European jaunt, the crew's commitment to realism means that they have painstakingly recreated the kind of temperatures you'd expect from a summer in southern Spain. Well, that or the air-conditioning is broken. 'Bloody hell! Is it hot enough in here?' exclaims Brydon as he gets on the bus. He takes a moment to remove his navy blazer and mop his brow, before leaping straight back into presenting mode. 'The clues are there!' he announces as the coach rumbles to life and we drive off to the sound of the most Rob Brydon thing imaginable – an impression of a TV star whose best-known work came before the 1990s. 'As David Frost used to say, the clues are there as we go through the keyhole …' Exactly how you play this game is a mystery. It seems really quite random. But there's one thing that is obvious from even a quick watch: you need your wits about you, because this is one devious TV show. The first episode opens with the contestants waiting in a packed German airport. But all the other passengers are actors. The check-in staff are fake. It is littered with details that the unknowing participants will shortly be tested on in a game they have to survive to avoid being kicked off the show – from fake couples loudly arguing about the allowable weight of luggage to names read out over the PA system. Before the passengers are even allowed on the bus, they're stuffed into a helicopter, blindfolded and disorientated by being flown around for an hour. Hopefully, they didn't come up with this idea based on the fact that the East German Stasi used the same tactic with political prisoners being driven to jail. But there is sneakiness here that even the Stasi didn't think of: to make contestants think they have landed in the same place as they took off, they employ three sets of identical twins as fake airport staff. One set are in the original location, the second at the landing site. All the contestants need to do to figure it out is read the microscopic names on their identity badges. 'That is the nuts!' chuckles the executive producer Dan Adamson. 'We just thought: wouldn't it be funny?' Very sly. But while they go to extreme lengths to confuse the contestants, presumably they don't deliberately make them think they're in completely the wrong place? For example, at one point in Destination X's first episode we're shown a teaser of a screen being driven up alongside the bus as it barrels down the road, and playing a video through the window. That's not an attempt to show fake scenery, is it? 'No, we're showing them a clue,' says Adamson. So we can trust what we're shown through this bus's windows should they open? 'We don't have the budget to CGI,' says Brydon. 'Otherwise I would have been a bit taller!' As if on cue, the bus window pops open. We're crossing the Thames on Tower Bridge! Well, hopefully I can trust that. Not that it is particularly useful info. How on earth do you do this? 'We had players who would try to track the sun,' says Adamson. 'We had one player who every time we went in a tunnel would count to see how long it was. They were trying to work out the speed and the distance of the coach. And they would react to weather, you know: it's getting warmer, it's getting colder …' 'I would be terrible at this,' says Brydon. 'If I saw the sun, that would tell me it's daytime.' The more you hear about the show, the harder it is not to be blown away by the logistics involved. The sheer number of staff and kit meant that, according to Adamson, they had to travel in a convoy of about 50 vehicles, all of which did 11,000km in 32 days, before the 190 staff retired to one of the 7,000 hotel rooms they booked during the shoot. Every piece of food or drink had to be removed from its packaging and put in an unmarked container. To give contestants a fresh air 'safe zone' after a journey, they'd park other coaches alongside the bus to create a four-walled square, top it with a camo net to prevent them seeing out and install a carpet and running machine. When Brydon arrived on location, he said the sheer scale meant it was often like they had 'built a new town'. It is, however, hard not to wonder: is this the most environmentally responsible way to make a TV show? At this point in our race towards climate catastrophe, isn't it in poor taste to pump 11,000km worth of vehicle emissions into the atmosphere – particularly given that it comes from the channel behind The Traitors, who know only too well how to create astonishingly addictive TV while barely leaving one building? According to the BBC, 'Destination X is certified by Bafta Albert, which encourages sustainable TV and film production, confirming that consideration of carbon emission reduction was given throughout the production.' They point out to me that they had a 'carbon action plan' whose measures included crew taking big minibuses to reduce the number of vehicles and minimising the diesel generators used – meaning they were certified two out of a possible three stars by Albert. The coaches were also not petrol, but Euro 6 diesel engines. So choosing to do all these miles is less an issue with the climate crisis, and more one of the air quality local kids breathed. Talking of air quality, that presented its own challenge for the contestants cooped up on a coach together. 'We set ourselves one rule: no number twos on the bus. That gave us a problem. Suddenly it was like: why do these people have to go to the toilet so often?' says Adamson of the fact that they had to pull the coach over every time anyone needed to go. 'Everyone had to be really open about it – you couldn't be discreet. You'd be blindfolded, chaperoned, have someone waiting outside while you did your business … I can't believe how much time we spent talking about toilets.' At this point, Big Ben starts chiming. For a brief moment I can't work out whether it's real or coming over the coach's sound system, until I look at my watch and realise it's 2.12pm – not a usual time for a clock to chime. 'He shouldn't have been allowed his watch!' exclaims Brydon. Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion 'On the original Belgian format, they had a clock on the bus that they controlled the speed of, and they would slow it down,' says Adamson. 'But we decided not to do that, because it was a little too machiavellian.' 'You know what they did have on that bus, though?' shoots back Brydon. 'Very good air con.' Over the course of the next hour, the windows pop open again, only to reveal that we are once more crossing the Thames, this time on London Bridge, now going north. Production staff repeatedly insist that there are clues all over the bus even though all I can see are a couple of half-inched boxes of popcorn and some flyers from the Curzon, plus a few bags of rapidly melting mini Wispas. 'Is it worth mentioning to the driver that the air conditioning is ineffectual?' asks a reddening Brydon. 'We're all sitting here like lobsters in a pot.' By now, he's looking a tad dishevelled. Which is a shame, because one of the most fun things about Destination X is Brydon going all flamboyant with his sartorial choices: from dressing like an airline captain to checked blazers that wouldn't look out of place on Toad from The Wind in the Willows to a moment he turns up dressed as Indiana Jones. 'I did look to Claudia Winkleman on The Traitors,' he says. 'I've gone for it!' At this point, the coach grinds to a halt. We're ushered to a recreation of 'the map room': the cubbyhole that contestants use to make their guess by placing an X on a digital map. They normally get two minutes – I'm given one. Bearing in mind the Big Ben bells we were played, I try to scroll across the map to find where Big Ben's bell was created: Whitechapel Bell Foundry. But I can't find it on the map. So as I run out of time, I go for plan B: Westminster, home of Big Ben. 'The person whose guess was furthest from the location is …' announces one of the show's producers, once we've all placed our X, '… Alexi!' Great. Last place. If this were the actual show, I'd have been booted off the coach at a random European destination. But as I step off the X bus, I find that we are … back at the Curzon cinema where we started. Exactly what sort of clues were meant to tip us off to that being our destination? 'Didn't you see the tubs of Curzon popcorn and Curzon flyers?' I thought they'd been nicked from the cinema! 'There were fake tickets hidden in the cushions as well if you looked.' Brilliant. Clearly, I'd be terrible at the show. But it's not like I missed out on much. 'The prize?' I hear Adamson reply. 'Oh yeah, it's excellent … have a bag of melted Wispas.' Destination X is on BBC One on Wednesday and Thursday at 9pm.
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Monopoly': Inside Netflix's Massive Bake-Off To Win Right To Produce Board Game Reality Series
EXCLUSIVE: Netflix is no stranger to the bake-off, a process designed to choose a production company to make a certain show, in the unscripted universe. The streamer has held auditions for such series as Meghan Markle's With Love, Meghan, which was won by Sony's IPC, and its upcoming Willy Wonka series The Golden Ticket, which will be produced by The Floor producer Eureka Productions. More from Deadline 2025 Premiere Dates For New & Returning Series On Broadcast, Cable & Streaming Netflix's 'Willy Wonka' Reality Competition Series Bake-Off Won By 'The Floor' Producer Eureka YouTube Shows Are Increasingly Going To Netflix. Now The Streamer Wants To Make Them Bigger However, its latest process to pick a company to make a reality series based on iconic board game Monopoly has taken things to a new level. Deadline understands that there are around 40 companies vying to score the right to make Monopoly, which Netflix picked up from Hasbro Entertainment earlier this year, as revealed by Deadline. Seeing as there are around the same number of companies keen to battle it out to make the show as there are squares on a Monopoly board, the process has been the talk of the unscripted business over the past week. Jeff Gaspin, who heads up unscripted at Netflix, told Deadline that he was convinced to buy the project without a pitch in part due to the success of Monopoly Go!, the mobile board game from Scopely that came out in 2023. That game is thought to have had more than 150 million downloads and generated at least $5 billion in revenue. 'There's a gameplay in Monopoly Go! that I think really will resonate with gameplay in an unscripted series,' he said. 'The idea itself is still up for grabs. How do we want to approach it? Is it a giant game board? Is it in the real world? We don't have the answer and we had so many agents and so many production companies reaching out and asking us if they can participate, and asking if we'll consider putting them in the bake-off that we didn't want to be restrictive. So, we said, 'Why don't we do a first round that's pretty broad.'' Companies have had to be either invited to join the process or pre-approved by Netflix executives. It's believed that these companies then signed a two-page contract, which highlights that the successful company won't secure any back-end rights to the property, before being asked to submit a logline. It's thought that this larger group will be whittled down to around 15 companies who will be invited into a 15-minute pitch meeting, where a winner will either be declared or a handful of companies will be chosen to develop their ideas further. Netflix is hoping that the end product will be a 'large-scale' series similar to its hits like Love Is Blind and Squid Game: The Challenge. One source said that the unprecedented scale of the bake-off was 'ridiculous,' while another called it a 'little out of control.' 'It seems completely crazy and also seems completely disrespectful of people's time and resources,' added a producer. But Gaspin disputed this notion, saying the process is designed so companies don't waste a lot of time developing and pitching a series that doesn't make it. 'We'll see what comes back,' he said. 'My guess is this is going to be an iterative process. It's going to take us a little while, but that's okay. We did it with The Golden Ticket and I'm really excited about the creative on The Golden Ticket. We did that in a bake-off style process and I think it's good for the community that producers and production companies have a chance to show what they have.' He added that it may also open doors for companies that haven't scored a big unscripted series for Netflix. 'Even if they don't get picked on this project, we might see something in their pitch that we really like, so we'll keep them in mind the next time something comes along. I think it's healthy for the community to give a lot of people an opportunity.' Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Emmys, Oscars, Grammys & More Everything We Know About 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' Solve the daily Crossword
ABC News
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
What to watch in July, from 1880s homestead reality series Back to the Frontier to Washington Black
What happens when you take a bunch of technology-dependent teenagers and force them to swap their 21st-century lives for an 1880s homestead? This is the premise of new reality series Back to the Frontier, which sees three families stripped of their creature comforts and hauled off to spend a summer in the wilderness. Each hopes that trying something this big will change the way they not only relate to each other, but to the world around them. Also new this month, we have a whirlwind adaptation of Canadian author Esi Edugyan's Booker-nominated novel Washington Black, as well as a reality show that looks at what it takes to write a number one song. But that's not all — there's also a fresh nature documentary led by the ABC's resident nature journalist, Ann Jones, and a powerful queer Pasifika story set in Western Sydney. Reality series Back to the Frontier opens as the extremely particular Hanna-Riggs, the incredibly emotional Halls, and the frankly very capable Loper families are dropped at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains of western North America with little more than the clothes on their backs and three scarcely habitable cabins to call home. They have one objective: to prove they can work the land. Just like the real-life 1880s homesteaders, they will be judged on their ability to build a secure, comfortable home, farm the land and fill their pantries with enough meat, vegetables, baked goods and dairy to survive an entire winter. Don't go into this show expecting things to get that tough: the fact this series focuses on families should be enough to tell you HBO was never going to let these people struggle like the contestants on hit survival competition Alone. But, unlike the competitors on Alone, these people have little to no skills. And while they presumably went into this fully aware they wouldn't have makeup or any technology whatsoever, let alone electricity or running water, they can't handle it. There is a lot of crying — and not just from the kids. This is a show that wants you to lean into peak voyeurism. But it also provides a surprising amount of information about the original homesteaders, with experts including historians and modern homesteaders dropping in along the way. The result is a series that's quietly heartfelt, and which features some wholesome conversations around confidence and the importance of community. Not everyone is into it, though — some conservative Christians in the US are furious a gay couple was cast. Make of that what you will. For fans of: Colonial House, Alone When 11-year-old George Washington "Wash" Black (Eddie Karanja) escapes the 19th century Barbados sugar cane plantation where he was born at the beginning of this series, it feels like an against-all-odds miracle, never to be repeated. But then he hitches a ride away from the Caribbean in a bizarre flying machine with his white saviour/scientific mentor Titch (Tom Ellis) and takes up with a band of pirates. The adult version of Wash (played by Ernest Kingsley Jr) goes on to find not only freedom, but love, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Executive produced by Sterling K Brown (who also stars in the series as Wash's friend, Medwin) Washington Black isn't your typical narrative about the horrors of slavery. Told from the perspective of a sensitive and brilliant young boy, this eight-part series is a story about daring to dream, despite the circumstances. You'll frequently have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy this odyssey; adapting a fantastical story like this for the screen is immensely difficult. But this series has just as much to say on white guilt, romance across class lines, and the notion of freedom as the book that inspired it. For fans of: Kindred, Belle Netflix's latest unscripted series is for everyone who's ever looked at the songwriting credits of a hit song like Sabrina Carpenter's Espresso and wondered how it took so many people to come up with the lyrics "Say you can't sleep, baby, I know / That's that me espresso". Hitmakers offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to create a number one song. The show follows 12 hit writers and producers from the US as they compete against each other for the privilege of writing new tracks for John Legend, Shaboozey and Lisa of Blackpink/The White Lotus season three. Over six episodes, the creatives behind the likes of BTS' Butter, Ariana Grande's Thank U, Next and Beyoncé's Cuff It attend three different songwriting camps, where they have just six hours to come up with a hit. Hitmakers isn't sure whether it wants to be a documentary or a reality show. It has the tension and pacing of a reality show and goes out of its way to confect drama, and yet it treats the craft of songwriting as a docuseries would. The famous musicians almost feel like an afterthought, dropping in at odd moments. Who knows if there will be a Hitmakers season two? The idea that this may never be repeated somehow makes the first season more compelling. For fans of: Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, Formula 1: Drive to Survive When Moni (Chris Alosio) returns to Western Sydney for his baby sister's wedding after 10 years in London, he doesn't expect to see his dead mother Tina (Tina Leaitua) there. She has no idea she's dead and he has no idea how she's returned — or why he's the only one who can see her. Then Moni is reminded of the Samoan proverb, "Teu le Va", which roughly translates to, "tend to your sacred spaces". To achieve this, one must live a life of truth. Moni reluctantly comes to the realisation his mother's apparition has to do with their avoidance of two very different things. If she has any hope of passing on, they must both accept their truths. For Moni, this means embracing his sexuality and learning how to be part of his Samoan community as his full self. For Tina, it's about admitting her failures as a parent. This genre-bending, queer, Pasifika-led series packs a lot into its six 10-minute episodes — from explorations of the varying lived experiences of queer Samoan-Australians, to the importance of remembering the cultural lessons of one's parents. Moni could have used a hell of a lot more funding (it's part of the SBS Digital Originals initiative, which supports new Australian stories), but the messages at the heart of this layered and intimate series will stay with you, regardless. For fans of: White Fever, Swift Street Nature journalist Ann Jones joins scientists trying to gain a deeper understanding of some of the world's most reclusive — and dangerous — animals in this moreish six-part docuseries. Starting with bull sharks on the Great Barrier Reef, each episode offers an intimate look at one animal. The deadly sea snakes of the Pilbara in WA are next, followed by the orangutans of Borneo, three different species of turtle in the Dampier Archipelago region of WA, and the dugongs of Queensland's Moreton Bay region. Last up: the elusive pangolins, again of Borneo. As the ABC's beloved "nature nerd", Ann brings a contagious blend of enthusiasm and curiosity to this immersive series. In less than 30 minutes, she'll have you reconsidering your understanding of each of these creatures. Bull sharks, for example, are more than just opportunistic killers. And did you know there's a breed of sea snake that hatches its eggs internally? For fans of: The Kimberley, Australia's Wild Odyssey
