Human cannonballs! Human pinballs! Crashes, smashes and mud splashes!
Twenty-four thrillseekers will compete on the world's largest extreme obstacle in WIPEOUT, a painfully funny new reality series that premieres on Channel Nine, Tuesday July 8 at 7.30pm.
WIPEOUT is designed to provide the most spills, face plants and wipeouts ever seen on television. The program premiered this week in the United States on the ABC Network, with over 10 million viewers, making it the highest rating debut of the US 2008 summer season. The show was ABC’s best premiere for a summer show since 2005, and took the network to a strong victory on Tuesday night.
Each week 24 daring new contestants of all ages, shapes and sizes go head-to-head through four rounds of gruelling and physically demanding, but wildly hilarious, obstacle courses to win the title of Wipeout Champion and the grand prize of $50,000.
The contestants and the courses change every week, with an arsenal of 60 stunts and over-the-top obstacles. Some, such as Big Balls, where contestants try to run across a row of giant, bouncy red balls without falling off, prove to be so entertaining that they become show fixtures.
Others include:
•The Sweeper - Perched on a pole, contestants must jump over a rotating arm that gets faster and higher until it knocks them over.
•Dizzy Dummy - Six people get strapped to a spinning mechanism and then run a short course.
•The Dreadmill - Contestants run on a 40-foot-long treadmill, which goes up to 15 mph, while leaping over inner tubes and opening up doors in their path.
•Sucker Punch - it's like Whack-a-Mole if the mole were doing the whacking: Contestants run along a wall from which fists pop out and sucker-punch them.
In the end, only one contestant will win, while everyone else will wipeout.
“We are really excited to bring WIPEOUT to the Australian audience, its a really fun show for the whole family to watch together, said Nine’s Head Of Programming Michael Healy, “Its good, clean fun – except for the mud!”
WIPEOUT is hosted by John Henson (E! Entertainment's Talk Soup) and John Anderson (ESPN's SportsCenter), with Jill Wagner as co-host.