Updated includes program 2 (Mole, The)

Member Name: tommy7

Product:	Mole, The
Date:	14/01/01 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Compelling Viewing

Disadvantages: None so far!

“The Mole” has been really getting a lot of advertising on Channel 5 so I thought I would give the first program a try. However, “Jailbreak” was fresh in my mind and it was a very poor program so I have to admit I was more than a little sceptical before I watched the show. The show originates from Belgium, as can be seen from the end credits, and had won the Golden Rose of Montreux 2000. This award is generally considered the top award in European television.

Once again, the contestants for the show applied through a newspaper advert. They knew very little about what would be involved. However, there is one difference with this show. The makers have planted one of the 10 contestants. They are “The Mole”, hence the name of the program. It is his/her job to sabotage the team in their effort to complete the various tasks they are presented with.

Similar to the hugely successful “Big Brother” one of the contestants is eliminated each week. However, this time I feel that the method of elimination is extremely clever. The problem with Big Brother is when Nasty Nick got eliminated a lot of people lost interest in the show as he was the pivotal character at that point. Although Nasty Nick wasn’t voted out he was caught flouting the rules to such an extent the program makers had no choice but to evict him. With “The Mole” the contestants get asked 20 questions at the end of each show. These questions are all about the identity of “The Mole”. The idea being that the people who are doing well in guessing the identity will not be eliminated and it’s the poorest player who will be eliminated. Obviously the Mole knows his own identity so there is no possibility of him/her being eliminated early so the interest in the show should be maintained until the conclusion.

The contestants can earn up to £200,000, which goes into a central fund. The winner of the
show takes all of the money. The money is earned by the contestants completing various challenges, which are set throughout the show. In the first program the challenges were

1. All 10 had to parachute from a plane; if only 9 jumped they would get no money. If all 10 jumped the fund would grow by £10,000. The contestants were strapped to the back of the instructors so this was not as bad as it could have been and was an easy way to break the contestants in. This was also a clever one to start with as most people have a fear of heights to some degree. The other contestants have to decide if the reluctant jumpers have a genuine fear of heights or if that person is the Mole trying to sabotage the £10,000 prize for this task.

2. After the contestants arrived at the airport 5 of them went on to their Hotel. The other 5 stayed at the airport and rearranged everyone’s luggage. The 5 at the Hotel had to come back and state which item of theirs had been discarded as not being useful. If 3 of the 5 got it right they would have boosted the kitty by £5,000. The identity of the Mole was not revealed in the slightest here as the first 3 all guessed incorrectly. This may mean the Mole put away items the people would have not guessed or the guessing mole guessed a ridiculous item. There is little point in looking into this game too much as it was a total failure by all of the contestants.


3. The third challenge again was for £10,000. One contestant was taken hostage during the night and it was up to the others to find and rescue him in 90 minutes. The contestants were split into 3 teams of 3. A boat team, a helicopter team and a car team. All the teams were connected by having a mobile phone and the hostage had a mobile which would only accept incoming calls. The contestants had to meet at the hostages cell as each team had a key and the three keys were needed to free the hostage. The contestants managed this and secured anot
her £10,000 to take the fund up to £20,000, or so they thought.

One of the Rules of “The Mole” is that the contestants cannot break the law. When the car team was arriving at the cell they drove the wrong way down a one-way street. This results in an automatic failure of the task and as a result no money. There were potentially a few people responsible for this error. The driver for not noticing the sign and the other groups who were beckoning the car the wrong way when they were 10 feet from the sign. These people were highlighted in a briefing before the contestants had to go for their first elimination questions.

As I said before the elimination is 20 questions about the Mole. The questions are along the lines of “Does The Mole have any children?” This is quite an open ended question and as there are 10 people you could get lucky. As the series progresses I expect the questions to get more specific with each program.

The contestants get back together and their names are entered into the computer one by one. If you are the unlucky contestant the screen turns red. As long as you are not the eliminated person the screen will turn green. This was quite a stressful time for the people involved. However, unlike other shows of this nature there seemed to be a genuine community spirit. I suppose this is because the people have been working as a team to accumulate more money and there is not a guaranteed prize fund of several thousand which is all they are focusing on. In this show they are trying to build a prize fund and there is a feeling of togetherness. Julie Woolston was the first contestant to be eliminated. She had helped one of the others through the parachute experience and there was a feeling of sadness that she had to go. One of the contestants even remarked that she would be keeping in touch.

I am looking forward to the next program and I will try and update this opinion each week
. For a bit of fun I am going to guess each week who the mole is and welcome you to guess on the comments page.

I think its too early to guess who the mole is based on facts so I am going to go on a few gut feelings.

Zi Khan seems to be the favourite among the contestants as they nominated him to be the hostage. I think they nominated the person they thought most likely to be the Mole so that the task would not be sabotaged.

For no basis other than he is a Company Director and they must be the least trustworthy people in the land (j/k) I am suspicious of John Church.

The general feeling seems to be that the Mole is a male. I think it will be a female, again not based on much but I think Channel 5 will want to surprise us so for my opening guess I am going to go for Gloria Bernard. Please let me know your thoughts as I’m interested to see who others think it will be and why.

=============================================P rogram 2 started with the contestants in confident mood. Again they were to face 3 challenges throughout the program, this time for a total of £20,000.

Gloria Bernard was ill and could not take part in the days events. The other contestants were immediately suspicious as this would hamper them. However, surely The Mole would want to be as involved as possible to ensure things go wrong?

The first challenge was to do with Golf. The group had 15 seconds to nominate the best then the worst golfer. Oliver was chosen as the best and Sara as the worst. Oliver then had 3 hours to make Sara as good a Golfer as he could manage.

During this time the remaining contestants had to split into 3 teams, The Animal Lovers, the Extroverts and the Artists. The teams had to raise £150 for charity in 3 hours. The tasks were to offer Donkey Rides (in the pouring rain), present a Punch & Judy show (again in the poring rain) and to draw caricatures of people who were in the local p
ub. I thought there is no way they would have managed the tasks but the groups managed £70.58, £90.93 and £55 respectively. Therefore £5,000 was added to the winning fund. Channel 5 doubled the charity money as well so over £400 was donated which was a nice touch.

Challenge 2 was for Sara to play a par 4 golf hole. She got 4 free shots and each of the contestants were then asked a quiz question to get a further 2 shots. If she completed the hole in the allocated shots or less the group would add £5,000 to the fund. They only got one question right so Sara only got 2 additional strokes. Had Gloria been there the group would have got 1 more question so there was a bit of ill feeling towards her. Sara hit an excellent first shot but the rest were average and her last one actually ended up further from the hole than from where she started. But on the whole she did very well. However a failed challenge.

Challenge 3 was to complete 3 laps of a circuit in various cars. The contestants made poor choices as to who did what and as a result they failed the challenge by quite a bit. So another potential £10,000 down the drain.

The contestants seem to be getting frustrated with one another and are starting to break into little divisions and are growing increasingly suspicious and paranoia is starting to set in.

Anyway it was off to complete the questions about The Mole again. This time Gloria was the least correct which maybe wasn't surprising as she had spent 2 days in bed and had been unable to gain any further information. I knew that as I had picked her last week she would be the next one eliminated!

The contestants now seem to be suspicious of Paul Wallace-Sims.

For this weeks guess I will go for Paul as well. I am also growing increasingly suspicious of John Church. Please let me know who you suspect now.

Summary: