Show of the week: Ciao Darwin

Arabelle Pouliot-Di Crescenzo, Kabo International’s managing director, says she first saw Ciao Darwin over a decade ago. Fast forward to 2016 and her company has picked up the rights and is taking the format to market.

The show hails from Italy where it is on Mediaset’s free-to-air channel Canal 5 with season seven launching in March.

It pitches contrasting groups against one another – men vs. women, young vs. old, bald vs. hairy – in an attempt to discover, in true Darwinist fashion, the best designed members of the human species.

“Each of the groups is represented by a celeb and [producers] can choose the categories to tap into the zeitgeist,” says Pouliot-Di Crescenzo.

The final segment sees a representative of each group face off in a head-to-head in which they are in a cylinder that fills with water when they incorrectly answer a question.

Kabo has been bringing classic formats to market such as Who’s Who and this is the latest in that line.

The format has been sold into some international territories before, including Greece and Poland, but Kabo is giving it a full international launch, with the sales effort getting underway earlier this year at NATPE.

“It’s a big party basically – a tongue in cheek format that has an amazing track record in Italy, where it is a huge show,” says Pouliot-Di Crescenzo. “We have a detailed promo and not all of the elements in the Italian version need to be included internationally.”

The show: Ciao Darwin

The producer: R.T.I. Mediaset

The distributor: Kabo International

The broadcaster: Canal 5 (Italy)

The concept: Primetime entertainment show in which categories of people compete against each other