Big Brother around the world

Big Brother puts another HM in hospital

It may be over in Australia (for now at least), but Big Brother is still going strong around the world and is currently on air in seven countries, while the fifth season of Loft Story, the French Canadian version of the show, launches tonight.

BIG BROTHER CONTINUES

Series are currently on-going in India, Africa and Israel - which managed to screw things up with their very first eviction by miscounting the number of votes the nominees received, meaning they had to scrap the public vote and send the first evictee back into the house - only for him to be evicted again one week later.   The Croatian version is also on-going and in it’s fifth season - but for reasons best known to the producers, it is being filmed in Thailand rather than the country itself.

THE FINNS NAIL IT

The fourth season of Big Brother in Finland had been going fairly strongly too, with a revamped house and well cast group of housemates seeing the ratings jump from last year - until they invited the guys from the Finnish version of Jackass to make a guest appearance.   The housemates enjoyed the sometimes painful shenanigans - but Harri would soon come to regret volunteering to have his ear nailed to a block of wood.  A couple of days later he became very ill in the house and was rushed to hospital, with it subsequently confirmed that he’s suffering from blood poisoning.

At least Harri made it into the house though before being rushed to hospital…

CRASH LANDING

Having had a year off to rebuild their house, Bulgaria opted to launch with an all female line up - and a crashed plane in the garden, where the housemates would begin their lives in the Big Brother house.   However, for Neli she never even got to walk through the door (or slide down a slide as they actually did) - fainting on the stage as she made her entrance.    The producers then learnt she had been prone to fainting in the past, so didn’t permit her to enter the house.

Considering the all female launch flopped in BBUK, the producers didn’t wait for too long until they sent in some testosterone, with 11 men entering the house just a few days later - with one armed with one of Big Brother’s most disturbing secret missions - to pretend to be Mentally Handicapped.  Entertainment or just plain wrong - well, the jury is still out on that.

(NOT QUITE) TEN YEARS

Next year it will be ten years since Big Brother burst onto screens in the Netherlands and then took over the world.   Big Brother 10 has just finished in the USA and took a twist free approach by having a house of total strangers for the first time since BB3 - resulting in one of the most popular seasons, and one of the shows most popular winners, in years - and proving that all these years on, the show can still recover from a bad season after the flop of Big Brother 9.

However, the Spannish consider themselves to be the first version in the world to really hit ten seasons, believing that America’s seventh season, Big Brother All Stars, shouldn’t be counted.   And they’ve marked ten years of Gran Hermano by resurrecting something from season one - the house.

The majority of this seasons housemates moved into a recreation of the house from the first year - which was designed to look like it had remained uninhabited since 1999.   However, when “Gran Hermano” tried to plant the winner of the first season, Ismael, into the house the housemates rumbled him immediately.

However, they are yet to discover the second house - the “Gran Hermano 10″ house, which was initially occupied by just two housemates - a secret couple, but will gradually see housemates fake evicted from the GH1 house over the first few weeks.

AND FINALLY…

Us BBUK fans are eagerly awaiting a series which has already been filmed, all housemates have an agent and the winner pre-determined - as Big Brother gets scripted.   Dead Set is due to hit UK screens within the next month as the horror series depicts the residents of the Big Brother house trying to survive as the world outside falls foul to the waking dead.   It really does bring a whole new meaning to Davina’s catchphrase - “I’m Coming to Get You!”.   For more on Dead Set, see here.

Thanks to Graham UK, Spanish and Punde.

As always, all things worldwide regarding Big Brother can be discussed in our International Forum, while the General Big Brother forum remains open to discuss the legacy of BB in Australia, including the shows’ Greatest Moments.