An award-winning TV producer has opened up about the worst pitches she’s ever received for new shows.
Marion Farrelly, who has worked on shows including Big Brother, Dancing With The Stars, X Factor, Celebrity Apprentice and Farmer Wants A Wife, has sat through thousands of pitches during her career.
And she’s getting ready to sift through thousands more in her role as a judge for the AACTA Reg Grundy Award which is offering up $50,000 for the Aussie who comes up with the best concept for a new show. More on that later.
Speaking to news.com.au, Ms Farrelly said that when it comes to the “worst pitches” she’s received “two in particular really spring to mind because when I heard them I thought to myself, ‘on the way to the meeting did you take some acid?’”
“One was a weight loss show,” she said. “But, and this is absolutely true, it was a weight loss show for rabbits.”
People with “fat rabbits” would be invited to enter their pets and the show would follow the rabbits’ progress as they attempts to shed some weight.
“As soon as they left the room, we all looked at each other and went, ‘was that real?’” Ms Farrelly recalled.
The other pitch that was memorable for all the wrong reasons was a show called Crime Scene Clean-ups.
“Sometimes ideas are good on paper and then you see the reality of it and you think, ‘this is the worst thing ever made,’” Ms Farrelly told news.com.au.
The premise of the show was simple – viewers would see how horrific crime scenes are cleaned.
Speaking about the show, Ms Farrelly said: “Imagine you were watching One Born Every Minute which shows the joy of giving birth and you get see this beautiful baby come into the world and you see the parents reaction and it’s just wonderful.
“Now, imagine you don’t see any of that but what you see is just someone coming in and cleaning up the forceps and a bit of a blood and a tiny bit of poo. That’s what Crime Scene Clean-ups would have been like.
“You’ve taken away the joy and what you’re giving me is just the birthing table with no baby and no parent and no happiness.”
Obviously Ms Farrelly passed on the pitch, but she did point out that a not too dissimilar show aired in Russia.
“There was a show in Russia that went on for years and it was shown at like 5 or 6 o’clock in the evening when people are eating,” she said. “It was Russia’s Worst Road Accidents and they would show all the gory shots that we would never show here in Australia. It was phenomenal!”
THE WORLD’S CRAZIEST SHOWS
“TV shows are so crazy that stuff that you think will never get made will be made,” Ms Farrelly told news.com.au.
“I lived in LA for a while for the BBC and when I finished my contract we pitched a load of shows. We went into MTV and we pitched them three ideas. One was sensible, one was slightly crazy, and we pitched a really crazy one for a laugh.”
The really crazy show she pitched was called to be called Make Me Britney.
“It was a makeover show where you have plastic surgery to look like your idol,” Ms Farrelly explained. “We pitched it as a laugh and they said, ‘oh no, we’ve got one just like that in development already.’”
Ms Farrelly then ran through a series of other outrageous shows that have been made around the world.
“I’ll start with Yule Log. This was a show for Christmas morning and it was just four hours of a fire burning. It’s absolutely real and it went on for 23 years. It was just a fire burning!
“Hotter Than My Daughter is about mums who think they are better looking than their daughters and they get dressed up and people judge them,” Ms Farrelly said.
“Just Tattoo of Us is a show where pals go on and they suggest tattoos for each other. They do a reveal at the end where they get to see what tattoo their friend picked for them, and it always ends in disaster.”
“High Class Hooker High School was a show where the world’s best, most qualified sex workers would come together and they would run a school where you could come and learn the best sex techniques,” Ms Farrelly said. She then revealed, “that didn’t actually get made, but I did pitch it!”
HOW YOU CAN PITCH YOUR OWN SHOW AND WIN $50K
As mentioned before, Ms Farrelly is a judge for The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Reg Grundy Award.
It’s open to any Australian who has an idea for a new, unscripted entertainment TV program.
“If you’ve ever said, ‘I could come up with a better idea than that,’ write it down and enter,” Ms Farrelly told news.com.au.
“I love stuff that’s returnable and repeatable. They’re my two big words in TV. It has to be different, there has to be a unique selling point, something that isn’t available at the moment.”
Ms Farrelly continued: “I think there are two things you can do in life or in business or in TV: You do the same as everyone else but you do it better (which is what The Voice did when I was making X Factor and I hated them for it) OR you do the exact opposite.
“I really like quiz shows,” she said. “Because you can build the set and all you have to do is insert the people. They work really well because it means you can film 10 episodes in a day and keep the costs down.
“If you come up with a really good format that’s really simple … you will not be able to spend the amount of money you’ll make, it’s impossible,” she said.
If you’ve got an idea for a TV show, you can submit an entry for the AACTA Reg Grundy Award here
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiqgFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L3JlYWxpdHktdHYvd29yc3QtcGl0Y2hlcy1mb3ItdHYtc2hvd3MtcmV2ZWFsZWQtYnktZm9ybWVyLXR2LWV4ZWN1dGl2ZS1tYXJpb24tZmFycmVsbHkvbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9iYjNkMmIxZDg3YmNiMjEwOTc1N2Y1NmYyZTJhMTc0YdIBqgFodHRwczovL2FtcC5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L3JlYWxpdHktdHYvd29yc3QtcGl0Y2hlcy1mb3ItdHYtc2hvd3MtcmV2ZWFsZWQtYnktZm9ybWVyLXR2LWV4ZWN1dGl2ZS1tYXJpb24tZmFycmVsbHkvbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9iYjNkMmIxZDg3YmNiMjEwOTc1N2Y1NmYyZTJhMTc0YQ?oc=5
2020-09-05 22:49:50Z
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