Netflix reality show Big Flower Fight, might be its best yet
Such are the times in which we live, it seems we will watch truly anything. And Netflix’s new instalment of reality shows no one asked for but will watch anyway is no exception, writes Katy Hall.
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If you told me a year ago that I’d be counting the hours until the next episode of a series about the Chicago Bulls drops, I’d laugh. And then I’d ask you to repeat the statement.
I don’t watch sports. I don’t know the rules of basketball. I thought the Knicks were a baseball team.
But such are the housebound times in which we live, it seems we will watch anything outside of our regular repertoire.
A series about an aspiring country music singer who smokes meth, abuses endangered animals and grooms teenage boys? Count us in. Rewatching every episode of Game of Thrones? Sounds good.
But it’s reality television that has really come into its own during the pandemic. And in all categories Netflix has, perhaps better than any other service, provided a binge-able twist to the traditional structures that dominate the genre.
Think The Circle, their modern day answer to Big Brother in the social media age; Too Hot to Handle, a dating show which loosely mashes Bachelor in Paradise and Love Island together; and for the Michelin-minded stoners who want a more mellow take on MasterChef or The Great British Bake Off there is Cooking on High, a dining show in which weed is the non-negotiable ingredient of every dish.
In the even more niche recesses of its recent archive, we also have Blown Away, a series in which professional glass blowers compete to design and create, as you may have guessed it from the name, blown glass pieces. There is a huge amount of sweating, swearing and shattering of glass involved.
Then came the charming Next In Fashion, which was as much about marvelling at the design acumen of talented minds from across the globe battle it out as it was about the delightful pairing of hosts Tan France and Alexa Chung.
Perhaps the most iconic reality offering, though, has been Nailed It!, a series in which seriously mediocre home cooks are challenged to recreate complex baked sculptures that replicate, among other things, Rapunzel and Donald Trump. Try to imagine an inebriated toddler let loose with modelling fondant and food dye and you’re getting the picture.
And come 18 May, we’ll have the next instalment in this bizarre grouping of television absolutely no one asked for but we will surely all watch anyway – The Big Flower Fight.
According to the show’s judge, florist Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht, The Big Flower Fight is an eight-part series in which ten pairs of florists, sculptors compete to see who can build the most impressive garden sculptures in a bid to help “flowers finally get the respect they deserve” from the public.
“This isn’t your basic bunch of blooms,” Griffith VanderYacht explains. “This is the real deal.”
And while it’s hard to imagine there being anything inherently extreme or cut throat about the art of flower arranging, most of us didn’t imagine the world would want to keep up with the Kardashians for 17 seasons, or that watching a misfit group of marooned survivors would entertain us for 39 seasons.
And with half the world stuck inside, it’s no wonder we’re taking comfort in watching people play sport and turning to garden variety entertainment. And if that means bingeing a season of floral arrangements, then blooming oath, let’s do it.