First look at groundbreaking new season of The Block

Nine has released its first extended look at the problem-plagued new season of The Block following a dramatic exit and desperate social media plea.

Channel 9 has released the first look at the highly ambitious new season of The Block, which sees contestants swap the city for the countryside.

The Block: Tree Change is a world-first project, with five couples each tasked with building a 500sq m house, tennis courts, wineries and a lake on 4 hectares of land in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges, near the town of Gisborne.

The new season takes place in regional Victoria.

“These five new couples will be up to their necks in hard yakka,” the voiceover explains in the teaser.

And we already know there will be plenty of drama.

As has been widely reported due to the nature of pre-filming, one couple – influencers Elle Ferguson and Joel Patfull – drop out of the challenge just a few days in, following a family emergency.

Ferguson and Patfull were on the show for less than three days.

It’s a decision which clearly doesn’t go down well with host Scott Cam.

“One couple drops their tools and does a runner,” he’s heard saying in the promo.

“Why would you leave after two days?”

A frustrated Cam reacts to the news.

Cam’s frustration in the trailer comes just two weeks after he issued a stunning sledge at the high-profile couple, branding their exit “un-Australian” and “p*ss-poor”.

At the time of their departure, it was reported Patfull’s mother, Trish, fractured her neck after a nasty fall.

However, Cam suggested they simply couldn’t handle the gruelling workload.

“Forty-five thousand people applied to be on The Block and win life-changing money. These guys got on and they just couldn’t handle the pace after 48 hours … Which to me is a bit unAustralian! Have a go! It’s p*ss poor,” he said.

Cam later doubled down on the scathing criticism, explaining that they “created a fair bit of chaos for us here” in the first two days of filming.

“The show … we put a lot of time and money into the start of our show and then we had to rejig the whole thing … the whole promos had to be re-shot,” the Nine presenter said.

“It just was a lot of angst on our part when they just departed the way they did.”

Ferguson and Patfull’s dramatic exit wasn’t the only hurdle on The Block this year.

Last month, the series’ creators took to Instagram with urgent calls for help, revealing they faced a critical tradie shortage amid filming.

The program’s building company, based in Gisborne, Victoria, posted a desperate social media plea for applications to save the show.

“We desperately need help completing the current series of The Block: Tree Change. Carpenters, cladding crews, skilled labourers, trade assistants,” Nine in Six’s official account wrote.
The Block executive producer Julian Cress also told Melbourne’s 3AW last month that building materials have been “incredibly hard to come by” for the worksite, blaming a “pandemic hangover” for the multiple issues plaguing the popular home renovation series.
“We’ve battled through a lot over the last two years making the show with the pandemic, and I think we’re just seeing a bit of a hangover with Covid now. Materials have been incredibly hard to come by, a lot of the things we take for granted are just unobtainable … but now we’ve run into a real shortage of labour as well.”

The Block: Tree Change premieres in August on Nine.