Ben Aston and Catherine Saint discuss format trends such as crossover hybrid shows, clippable content and comedy’s renaissance, and how they are reflected in Lifted Entertainment’s new ITV show Celebrity Sabotage.
The contestants on ITV’s new series Celebrity Sabotage may not be the only ones getting more than they bargained for from the show.
Produced by ITV Studios-backed Lifted Entertainment, it is described by exec producer Ben Aston as a “show within a show.”
To begin with, contestants believe they are participating in very standard gameshows and cooking formats and competing for trophies. Lifted specialises in big Ronseal (‘Does exactly what it says on the tin’) shows for ITV like I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, Dancing on Ice and Love Island.
However, the shows are actually a ruse and are being secretly sabotaged be their guest hosts and a crew of celebrities that includes Harry Redknapp, Joel Dommet, Clare Balding, Emma Willis, Sara Davies, GK Barry and Rylan Clark.
“It’s a primetime family show that is essentially a show within a show,” says Aston. We’ve made six different episodes each with their own totally fake TV show, which we’ve built and cast from the ground up.
“It’s all for the greater good because they’re doing it to win money for the contestants, so the more they sabotage it the more they win. To say it’s a prank show is an understatement really, it’s a high-stakes comedy gameshow.”
And this means it follows the recent trend for hybrid formats, such as Last One Laughing (a stand-up comedy special wrapped in a competition format) and Married at First Sight (a reality series pretending to be a relationship social experiment).
“What Lifted do best is entertainment and reality, and this show is absolutely both,” says Aston. “This feels like a big, high-stakes game show, whilst also feeling like a reality show where you really care about people and laugh at the same time. So it felt like I’ve read the perfect format for Lifted.”
It also speaks to other trends, both positive and negative, in the industry: comedy for a fatigued audience, a clippable show that will do well on socials, but also long development times.
“It feels like the two really big things at the moment are strategy gameshows and also comedy, which seems to be making this amazing, really special, exciting resurgence,” says Aston. “With a format like this we can bring both together at the same time.”
Line producer Catherine Saint says: “We had a digital team embedded within our main team who were getting additional content specifically for that clippable, social purpose as well. So hopefully there’s lots of new content on socials that you’ll see. It’s a really special show for being clickable, clippable [and because] each sabotage mission can live on its own right.”
The show was first filmed as a pilot two years ago, and Saint does admit: “We have got lots of shows that are in development at the moment just waiting for that green light” – a hell that will be familiar to many producers in the current climate.
“As soon as we do get the green light we’re primed and ready because we know we’re going to need to make it straight away. That’s maybe a bit of a new landscape which we’re navigating as a company,” she adds.
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