Excess Baggage
No diets, no lockdowns, a fetching trainer, and eye-catching backdrops -but is there room for more than one weight-loss show?
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under Programming, Reviews
Truth be told I’m not especially a fan of the weight-loss genre.
Biggest Loser, Big, You Are What You Eat, The Weighting Game -they’re not exactly my preferred viewing at Dinner Time. But clearly there is a market for them and TEN’s Biggest Loser, now in its seventh season, sits at the top of the tree here.
With Loser now produced by Shine Australia and not FremantleMedia Australia, was it inevitable that Fremantle would dig deep and devise its own format for another broadcaster?
Nine has been down this path before with Celebrity Overhaul (2005) whose cast has been partially duplicated in 2012. Last time we had Australian Idol‘s Paulini Curuenavuli and now it’s Kate DeAraugo, Merv Hughes is now Robert “Dipper” DiPierdomenico, Fabio is now Kevin Federline. In fact there are even celebrities that I’m not convinced qualify for the title but I guess the cast from Australian Celebrity Survivor were a bit busy.
Thankfully the show offers more than spotlight-loving personalities migrating like moths to a camera.
The format sees them partnered with “everyday Australians” which I guess sounds nicer than non-celebrities / members of the public / tellytubbies who don’t have a chance without network television.
Each duo is shuffled into Wiggle-colour tops so that we can easily tell which one is falling down in the mud and which other one will scream at them in anger.
Each week of the series is also filmed before an eye-catching Aussie locale, this week it’s the Kimberleys. This cleverly gives the show a bit of a travel backdrop as well as putting its participants into foreign situations that may induce conflict.
Getaway-presenter-turned-singer Kate Ceberano tells the teams their success is up to them.
“No diets, no lockdowns,” she says.
Not like that other nasty show? Where’s an Ajay close-up when we need it?
Physical trainer and coach Christian Marchegiani is the show’s eye candy, move over Commando. He leads the team through their first “Spirit” challenge of trekking through the outback.
Video profiles of the non-celebrities give us an insight into their backgrounds, including 32 year old Alana who cares for her autistic sister.
Others also have a long-history of battling their weight and it affects their personal and professional lives -a bit like the celebs, which is kinda the point. As storytelling it works pretty effectively.
Nutritionist Dr. Joanna McMillan is about as cheery as they come, advising the teams of how to eat well during a buffet. If you’re paying attention at home, hey you might learn a thing or two. And there’s a face of a chubby celebrity on the screen just to drill it in: this could be you.
Excess Baggage insists it will arm its participants with information but it won’t be forcing them onto diets or even having weigh-ins. If MasterChef made us all experts on plating-up and the hero of the dish, then the challenge is on for Excess Baggage to educate us on a healthy regime.
Some of the celebrities are already annoying. Paparazzo Darren Lyons may have looked like an Aussie galah in the UK Celebrity Big Brother house, but that pink mohawk in the outback makes him look like ….. a galah. If the show plans to shift focus to team conflict instead of team solidarity it will be disappointing.
But on the whole this was a well-rounded debut with enough health tips, personal stories and exterior locales to sustain its lengthy debut. I have no idea if there is room for two weight-loss shows to survive in Reality TV’s early evening battle, but I guess if you can’t stand the heat you can always get out and into Seven’s kitchen.
My head hurts.
Excess Baggage airs 7pm weeknights on Nine.
46 Responses
I’m just wrapping up watching the 1pm repeat of EB on Nine. What an absolutely odd show. I’m not quite sure what to make of it, it’s very peculiar Let me get this straight – these are people who admit they have absolutely no control over food, binge on it, eat badly and do no exercise. They have all been this way for numerous years, so these habits are ingrained in them. So now they’ve all been brought together and told that there are no structured diets and no structured exercise routines and they can opt not to take part when they wish. Huh? What the???????? Who the hell pitched this concept???? I don’t understand – why is it so airy fairy and undisciplined? And I don’t understand why there are celebrities involved. I don’t see what they really bring to the format. It’s just so weird, I’m not sure that it is going to resonate with the audience. It is nowhere close to being as entertaining as MKR.
Sorry Fremantle. Sorry Nine. Its a loser. Must have been a tought shooting enviroment, but it hasnt come together.
Very sloppy.
In the first Seg of the first ep a girl told us she was 30 years old, then a graphic told us she was 31, then in another interview she said she was 32. And this was all in Seg 1.
Shall we talk about seg 2?
Is anyone at Fremantle upset with AJ having constant digs at The Biggest Loser and Fremantle…….. or is Ten?
Hmmm interesting. I didn’t watch this one, but last night I read an old Biggest Loser forum I used to go to. Most preferred this show’s more positive approach, and planned to watch this instead of TBL.
I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I was as fat as these people. Why would I watch them on TV.
Got bored of this after watching about the first 15 minutes of the show.
I managed to make it through to the bitter end of the first episode, but it was a struggle.
A few observations;
1) This thing plays horribly flat – there is very little tension,anticipation or narrative progress in the stories being told about the participants (celebrities or ‘normals’).
2) Despite shooting in the Kimberly the show looks very cheap. I think this goes back to the way it is shot – not enough cameras capturing the action so there are very few shots for the editors to chose from, leaving sequences to drag on an on from the same perspective. Kate Cabrano’s under the armpit sweat stains were enormous. Has there been more cameras they would not have been forced to use those shots and instead used a different perspective on Kate.
3) At the end of the 1.25 show I had little idea about what the intent or purpose of this show is. Clearly it is not about losing weight – it seems to be purely about the ‘journey’ which is a thought perhaps quixotically both terrifying and deathly dull.
Sorry Channel Nine, I will not be returning for the remainder this show.
Nine should have aired the Block and left EB for another time so as to not clash with Biggest Loser. EB has plenty of encores too with episodes at around 4pm on Gem, 1pm on 9 and after the cricket on Wed and Fri. I prefer Biggest Loser and 10 in general for reality. Ch 9 should consider having EB on for half an hr Mon – Fri without it going overtime. They should have new Big Bang Theory at 7:30pm and 2 Broke Girls at 8pm would have worked. Maybe Mike and Molly instead of 2 Broke Girls on Mondays could get an audience or even The Middle. Nine would be wise to cut back on EB.
MKR is a Masterchef clone just as EB is like Biggest Loser. Seven is worse when it comes to taking ideas from another network. Seven had to have a 6pm news bulletin, a currunt affairs show, a breakfast show, a morning show, a Sunday serious current affairs show, all to mirror Nine. The networks should look at doing their own thing, thy to make a difference to the others and dont waste time looking at what the others do as it could fail. Even Home and Away was created as Neighbours jumped to 10 and became a huge success but I wont call H & A, a Neighbours clone. TV in Australia is losing its quality even more. At least there are still some good shows to watch.
This epitomises everything I hate about reality TV. No, actually, all TV.
So many negative comments – could this be Nine’s Renovators?
it’s a show full of wannabe celebs wanting to get their head on tv again. i was surprised dipper wanted to go on this show. it’s celebrity overhaul with every day people
This show and time slot of dumb reality is awful.
Watched 15 minutes of it before MKR. First task, walk through the outback until you bump into some conveniently placed bark which is wrapped around a meaningful item for each of the non-celebrity contestants. Such a scripted task that really failed to keep my attention. Good luck with it Nine!!!
Terrible show. Having it run over time as i waited for BBT only annoyed me further!
It serves Nine right. They have made a habit recently of copying other channel formats and sets instead of coming up with their own ideas, and they have gotten away with it until now.
It was a little arrogant to think that they could come out and make a copycat show of The Biggest Loser and just take away TEN’s audience. From all reports, no one is losing weight on Excess Baggage, so there won’t be much incentive to watch at the end. Loser is a far superior show, the contestants really do lose weight and change their lives, and The Biggest Loser will win out in the end.
This show was absolutely terrible! Where’s the hook to watch? No weigh-ins! No eliminations for weeks! No diets! Just a bunch of has-been d-grade celebrities trying to make us feel sorry for them because they ate too much and didn’t exercise. And AJ declaring that she was forced to diet and walk on the treadmill to keep her job…and that she just wanted to be “me” is ridiculous! Of course she was going to put down Biggest Loser…that was obvious…but if being “me” means she wants to eat what she likes and get fat, then that’s fine. But why is she on this show??!! Where she is being told to diet and exercise??!! I’ll be watching Biggest Loser where there are real people with real issues, and they are given real advice and support and we see real results.
This was a really poorly made program, with so much directly lifted from The Biggest Loser.
The look, the challenges, everything felt like a photocopy from the Loser format guide. Although like all photocopies, they’re not as good as the original.
Nine were so concerned about this working they spent millions marketing it and deliberately ran it late into the Big Bang Theory so it would steal its ratings and boost the overall average.
If they hadn’t done this, mathematically Loser would have beaten it.
No this was terrible, it looks cheap – i Hope that Big Brother does not look this bad, Channel 10 is made for reality tv.
I think this show also had a lot of excess editing to do… By the time The Mentalist started, it was 9.45, 15 mins after the EPG specidied.
I thought it was absolutely awful. So bland, so boring I tried to give this a look but the Biggest loser is far superior!
Another weightless weightloss show. Celeb overhaul all over again. I found it hard to watch and the fact it ran over by 15 minutes is another trick to milk the ratings leading into BBT. I’m disappointed.
An hour of my life that I’ll never get back. Absolutely terrible.
I didn’t mind it, although most of the celebrities are annoying, with the exception of KFed.
It might rate ok on the first night but this show is not as good as the Biggest loser.
The celebrities they have are not good enough to pull a crowd. Darryn Lyons comes across as very cold. AJ rochester is not all that likeable. Dipper is nice to his partner but it is becomming obvious these shows are running out of stars. I thought this show would be better.
Mmm. Gave it a look but turned off before the end.
Don’t think even the locales will save this.
I don’t think I can sustain this and loser…
I tried to watch this, but gave up ten minutes. I found the celebrities annoying and the intro was too long. I ended up watching Spicks and Specks on ABC2. Which incidentally had the red Wiggle.