TCA: Mark Burnett's Latest Unscripted TV - 'Dancing Behind Bars' & Prison 'Idol'
Mark Burnett keeps putting his unscripted TV company up for sale, negotiates with the likes of IMG and even Ben Silverman's Electus, and then loses the buyer because he's asking too much. And, increasingly, Burnett has lost his programming touch, too. For instance, he took over HGTV's Design Star contest this season and turned the likeable Vern Yip into the awful Donald Trump. The result is a now unwatchable show. (Burnett doesn't even allow judges Candace Olson and Genevieve Gorder, both talented articulate designers, to talk. Just Yip. Ugh.) That said, Ray Richmond, who's contributing to Deadline's TCA coverage, just sent me the news that the crime-themed network Investigation Discovery has hired Burnett to find the talent lurking in America's prison system. Seriously.
Burnett's entry Dancing Behind Bars will look to uncover hoofer talent among the incarcerated. The other show, Talent Behind Bars, is designed as a singing competition and has yet to attach a producer. Richmond says media in the room already began dubbing the second show Prison Idol, which Investigation Discovery honcho Henry Schleiff didn't seem to mind. Schleiff noted that no hardened murderers will be permitted to participate -- just those convicted of crimes like selling crack. Who's gonna be the judges: prison guards? Surely there's a buyer now for Burnett's company with classy programming like that.
Ah, "reality" TV hits a new low. Still, if there's an audience for it, they will make it.
How about this for taste?
Disabled Big Brother housemate Steve Gill was forced to score darts bullseyes on the show last night to win food for the house - despite only having one eye and false legs.
The former soldier, who lost both legs and an eye aged just 19 in an IRA explosion in Belfast, had to land the arrows unaided by other housemates when Big Brother played the theme tune of Eighties darts-based quiz show Bullseye.
However, the Royal National Institute For The Blind branded the task 'unfair' and that producers had picked on Steve because of his disabilities.
The 40-year-old ex-serviceman amputee from Leicester bravely took up the challenge and stood on his painful prosthetic limbs for more than 45 minutes to manage the task outside in the rain and cold.
However, as soon as he hit the target, Big Brother immediately played the Bullseye music as a signal that he had to do it again, even though he was clearly in discomfort.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
