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A mixture of nostalgia, fear of failure and a certain laziness seems to have convinced television that all past time was better. First it was the fiction series. They returned from Twin Peaks, The X-Files and The Gilmore Girls in the United States to Paco's Men, The Boarding School, The Protected, Physics or Chemistry or, the last, A Step Forward, in Spain. That nostalgic explosion has moved to entertainment and projects that represent returns to the past accumulate.
The last two to be announced will be borne by Mediaset. The return of the contest ¡Allá tú!, another piece in the renewal of the grid that Telecinco is carrying out, is already warming up. The program, which aired the channel between 2004 and 2008 and which passed in 2011 to Cuatro, returns to its origin with Jesús Vázquez at the helm and is already looking for participants. This week, the communication group has also announced that Cuatro is preparing the return of the dating show Who Wants to Marry My Son? , which Luján Argüelles presented between2012-2017 and with which the television tróspida was born, full of colorful characters and bizarre and surreal situations highlighted by the edition of the program and that was so successful in social networks in its premiere.
Luján Argüelles, presenter of 'Who wants to marry my son?'.
One of the most talked about return announcements of recent weeks has been that of Operación Triunfo. Since 2001, 11 deliveries have been issued and now it prepares its transfer to payment platforms with its twelfth edition. Before the end of 2023, Amazon Prime Video will premiere its version of the show. It remains to be seen how the adaptation will finally be, but it is confirmed that there will be weekly live galas on Prime Video and 24-hour channel on YouTube.
Less than a month ago, TVE confirmed that this summer will return another of the most requested and remembered formats in social networks, The Grand Prix of the summer. It will do so without heifers. Yes, the physical tests will continue, some of always, others new, that will face the inhabitants of two villages. The show premiered in 1995 and aired every summer until 2005 on La 1. Then it jumped to the regional channels between 2007 and 2009.
One of the tests of the iconic 'The Grand Prix of Summer'.
Another contest that will return shortly is Password, this time with chain change. The format, presented by Luján Argüelles between 2008 and 2010 in Cuatro, jumps to Antena 3 with Cristina Pedroche as presenter. It also changes channel Me resbala, humor space that between 2013 and 2021 issued Antena 3 and that arrives at Telecinco with Lara Álvarez as host.
Traditional television is not the only one that is betting on returns of entertainment programs. Platforms are aimed at this fishing in the past. In addition to recovering OT, Prime Video is also responsible for the revival of the classic Yellow Humor, now with the name of Takeshi's Castle. The craziest physical tests are again the protagonists of a program that premiered in the late eighties and that in Spain was seen in different stages from the nineties on Telecinco and Cuatro. The new installment of Takeshi's Castle, recorded in Japan, will be reedited and dubbed in Spain with commentary by Jorge Ponce, Eva Soriano and Dani Rovira.
Even the One, two, three returns. Alejandro Ibáñez, son of Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, will be the project director for Twitch (Amazon's live video platform), which will be hosted by TheGrefg, one of the best-known content creators on the network. The original format is a television classic that aired between 1972 and 1994 at different stages and returned in 2004 without much success.
🔥🎙️ This has been the moment in which @TheGrefg has announced that the mythical 'One, Two, Three ...' with him as presenter.
The contest of contests is back! Laughter and fun are back! 😍 #VuelveUnDosTres pic.twitter.com/6LaPF8dlfg
- One, two, three... (@esundostres) April 26, 2023
This is not a new phenomenon, because in recent months contests such as Catch a million, Who wants to be a millionaire? or The fair price within the global trend that bets on recovering the question and answer programs to attract wide audiences and a very wide age range have returned to the grid.
Why this look to the past in search of revitalizing the television of the present? Different voices from the audiovisual industry point to several reasons. On the one hand, this type of formats, known in the television environment as killer formats (programs capable of becoming events that gather large audiences and talk about them the next day, giving visibility to the channel), do not appear every year, and it is normal for chains to cling to them when they arise. On the other hand, free-to-air television is tied to what it knows how to do well and that still attracts the public that watches traditional television. At the same time, the new television, the digital platforms, need an audience and get relevance and talk about them. In addition, they are formats that are backed by the success of the past, and that are already known by the public, with what that means savings in communication.
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