El Grand Prix del Verano 

This wildly popular Saturday-night show features a man dressed as a heifer (La Vaquilla) and a hairy bloke in a leotard called Wilbur. Welcome to primetime Spanish telly, truly Livin’ la Vida Loca.

I laughed like a drain at a shiny-floor It’s a Knockout in which small towns compete in ridiculous games – knocking human ducks off conveyor belts, collecting coconuts from a floating palm tree, saving kittens.

El Grand Prix del Verano first aired in 1995 on Televisión Española’s main channel La 1 (think BBC One) and ran for 14 seasons. It returned in 2023 and has proved a huge hit, picking up six nominations at this year’s Iris Awards, Spain’s equivalent of our RTS awards.

Ramón García (Ramontxu), a host of Wogan-status fame, has been almost ever-present and was joined last summer by Cristina López (Cristinini); neither seem unduly concerned about sharing presenting duties withLa Vaquilla and Wilbur.

The show remains resolutely old-fashioned, which is its charm, save for one necessary – prompted by animal protection laws – but arguably disappointing change. The original show had real-life baby cows chasing contestants round the stage. Properly bonkers, very Spanish, much missed.

Could it work here? Probably, but I suspect the UK contestants would be the usual gym bunnies, social media influencers and wannabe celebs. We have quite enough of them on TV, thank you.

Matthew Bell

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Nus & Culottés

The slogan says it all: “There’s no point in running – you have to go naked!” With a simple but eye-catching premise, this French travel show has found a large and loyal audience who perhaps came for the nudity but stayed for the message.

 In each episode of Nus & Culottés (Naked and Cheeky), two adventurers, Nans Thomassey and Guillaume Mouton, clearly kindred spirits in their lack of inhibition and passion for the natural world, set themselves a quest: a destination sometimes far away and a task when they get there.

To keep it interesting, they begin each adventure naked (don’t worry, it’s family viewing) and with just a makeshift bundle of basic equipment. As in life, it’s all about the journey, where Nans and Mouts must rely on their wits, a little wisdom and the generosity of strangers they meet on the way.

Airing on France 5 since its debut in 2012, Nus & Culottés has reached audiences topping a million, and received critical praise for its positivity and avoidance of cliché.

But there’s more to all this than uninhibited exhibitionism.

Nans and Mouts’ mission is to help us re-engage with the world of wonder and adventure, and marvel at the kindness and solidarity of our fellow travellers.

Caroline Frost

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Stasera Tutto È Possibile

If challenged to imagine your stereotypical Italian ­– black Ray-Bans? Elegantly creased linen? – the chances are they wouldn’t be wearing mouth retractors and shouting indecipherable phrases on TV.

In a country obsessed with fare brutta figura (never publicly embarrass yourself), where social mores might even trump some laws of the land, Rai 2’s Stasera Tutto È Possibile (Tonight, Anything Goes) seems seriously strange.

This popular gameshow, now in its 11th season, was adapted from a French TF1 format where a handful of celebrities compete in a series of bizarre challenges. That’s it.

The game described at the start is Labbracadabra, labbra being lips. Hmm.Even dafter is the Grande Brivido (Big Shiver) round in which two celebs act out an improvised scenario… while lying on a vibrating bed.

Dafter still is the burger game, which sees contestants put on T-shirts representing burger ingredients. Then lie on top of each other inside a giant bun. I know, right?

But Italian TV is ever surprising.

Changes to broadcasting laws in the 1970s meant that television lurched from wall-to-wall politics and Pope Paul VI to Stryx, a camp Saturday evening musical extravaganza with added nudity and satanism, and featuring a young Grace Jones.

Stasera Tutto È Possibile, with the sort of party games to send even toddlers running screaming for the hills, might actually seem sedate.
Carole Solazzo

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How To with John Wilson

I doubt that a show as weird and experimental as this would have seen the light of day – let alone on HBO, a network synonymous with prestige drama – without the involvement of Canadian comic and maverick Nathan Fielder. How do you sell a series in a genre of its own? One that’s ultimately about finding poetry in the utterly banal? And who, exactly, is John Wilson?

A quiet genius plucked from obscurity, Wilson was a modestly successful documentary-maker who had been building an archive of everyday footage from the streets of New York.  Now staggeringly vast, it’s this archive that allows him to pick a mundane problem – finding a parking spot, cleaning your ears – and embark on a rambling meditation by weaving together disparate shots.

Cleaning your ears? Doesn’t sound very appealing. But the beauty of the show (available on BBC iPlayer) lies in Wilson’s eye for what he calls “glitches in the matrix” – those fleeting, ordinary-but-strange moments that reveal modern life to be a weird and wonderful place. One of my favourite “glitches” is when, having stalked the actor Kyle MacLachlan into the subway and watched him repeatedly fail to scan his ticket, he opens a nearby door on to an adult lightsabre fight club.

In Wilson’s world, a strange subculture or a quirky character is to be found just around every corner:
“Mandela effect” conferences, Avatar fan clubs-turned-support groups, anti-circumcision campaigners…

And he somehow disarms his contributors to the extent that they’ll give him, say, a live demonstration of their foreskin-stretching machine.

Harrison Bennett