deMENSEN

Five Rose d\'Or nominations in five years for deMENSEN

This week, a reality show from deMENSEN was nominated for the prestigious Rose d’Or award in Luzern. The Belgian company also had a Rose d’Or nomination in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. No other Belgian production company ever saw its programmes being nominated for the Rose d’Or five times in a row.

The nomination goes to The Great Crossing. In this reality series, two picturesque Flemish villages were the scene of an ambitious social experiment. During one week all the men of both villages went to live in one village and the women in the other. That way, the villages of Lafelt and Rosmeer became an exclusive women’s village and an exclusive men’s village for one week.

The Great Crossing was based on the BBC-format The Week the Women Went. But the Belgian series ended up as a completely new version of the format. In The Week the Women Went all women left their British village, leaving their men behind. In The Great Crossing a second village was involved, where the men left the women. On top of that, a swap was introduced. The families without a man had an extra woman as a guest, and the families without a woman were host to an extra man.

This was the start of a special experiment: how do men arrange their tasks without their women. And how does a village with only women work, and families exclusively consisting of women.

five Rose d’Or nominations in a row

The nomination for The Great Crossing is the fifth Rose d’Or nomination in a row for deMENSEN.

Last year, in 2007, the nomination went to The Viewer of the Year, the Dutch version of a successful deMENSEN format.

In 2006, deMENSEN received a Rose d’Or nomination for The Home Team, an interactive game show. The Home Team was also nominated for the Banff World Television Festival in Canada in 2007.

In 2005, the original, Flemish version of The Viewer of the Year was nominated for the Rose d’Or. The show was broadcast on Dutch speaking Belgian VRT.

In 2004, deMENSEN got its first Rose d’Or nomination for Doe de Stemtest (This is Your Vote). This was an interactive show in which people could discover more about their own political views by answering a series of questions. Doe de Stemtest also won the prestigious Spanish Premios Ondas award in 2004.