The success of La revuelta has also turned the program into a breeding ground for new presenters within RTVE. After Lalachus was signed to host Grand Prix, now it is Grison who takes the lead of his own show with El escondite, a family entertainment contest that La 1 will premiere this fall. The classic childhood game thus arrives on television transformed into a large-scale format that was presented this week at the Vitoria Television Festival (FesTVal).
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“You will see a more formal, more playful, and also very sensitive Grison,” said David Broncano’s collaborator. “Although I hide being formal quite a bit, because it’s all an act,” he joked. In El escondite he becomes the host of a huge two-story house built inside a set, with more than 120 hiding spots.
From a control panel, Grison activates the stage mechanisms, controls the hiding spots, and pilots much of a competition in which a group of celebrities will test not only their ability to hide and seek but also their wit, creativity, and above all, their desire to have fun like children.
The program brings together 18 well-known faces — including Bertín Osborne, Inés Hernand, Paco Tous, Rosa López, Kira Miró, Pepón Nieto, Vicco, and Belinda Washington — who compete in groups of six. Different challenges determine who hides and who seeks, while the two best in each episode earn a spot in the grand final. The winner will donate the prize to the NGO of their choice.
“It’s the program with the easiest rules to explain in history,” said Pablo Abelenda, executive producer of Warner Bros. ITVP Spain. The challenge, however, has been to turn that game known by everyone into a television competition with enough elements to maintain tension. “Since on TV we like to complicate things a bit, we have some preliminary games that determine who hides and who seeks,” he explained. The house has 55 fixed cameras, as well as several GoPros, and the hiding spots are modified between rounds so that contestants do not memorize the set.
“It would be wonderful if people watch the show and create a strong comeback of playing in the street”
The original format comes from the Netherlands and the Spanish adaptation is a co-production of RTVE, Warner Bros. ITVP Spain, and Talpa Studios. “We have tried to bring it a bit to our territory; the original format is perhaps a bit colder, and we have given it a more Iberian tone, with more mischief,” said Grison, for whom one of the surprises of the recording (which took place in Amsterdam) was the involvement of the participants. As the rounds progress, the contestants begin to explore every corner of the house looking for places that were not even initially planned.
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Among these participants are Inés Hernand and Vicco, who also attended the presentation in Vitoria. For the former, “hiding was not very difficult, but hiding in a good spot was the tricky part.” For her part, the singer admitted that she got “into places I didn’t even think I could get into” and that the hardest part was managing time and pressure.
For Grison, taking charge of the format also meant changing register compared to ‘La Revuelta’. Used to the chaos of Broncano’s program, he acknowledges that it was a challenge to face rules and script. However, as the recordings progressed, he gained more room to imprint his personal stamp. “We increasingly gave more space to improvisation, humor, and fun.”
Grison admits he still plays hide and seek with his children and advocates the physical nature of an activity that does not need screens. That is why he hopes that El escondite transcends the screen: “It would be wonderful if, with family or friends, a strong comeback of playing in the street is generated and to regain that feeling of connecting among people by seeking each other.”
Optimistic about the future of ‘La Revuelta’
“I am optimistic because, in the end, La revuelta is not a program where we do any kind of political indoctrination.” This was Grison’s response to the uncertainty about the program’s future on RTVE, a few days after David Broncano raised the possibility that this might be his last season on the public channel depending on the outcome of the upcoming general elections.
Grison appeared more unconcerned: “I am very out of the politics topic, it’s like another separate dimension; my job is to make humor to entertain people.” He would not understand if a change of government led to the cancellation of the program, which, in his opinion, should not be identified with any political current.
La revuelta, he maintained, had been characterized by giving visibility to groups and people who barely had space on television and by making the audience an essential part of the program. “All the mentality that Spain has is represented,” he said.
That was where his optimism lay: “You can have friends from one political current or another, people can think differently, but in the end, there are things that unite us.” That is why he considered that withdrawing La revuelta from RTVE, if it continued to work, would be a mistake. And, in any case, he was not afraid for its future: “It doesn’t scare me. We will go somewhere else eventually
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