Link: https://nebula.tv/scav

The world's largest scavenger hunt happens annually at the University of Chicago. The Wendover Productions team documented one year of the absolute insanity that takes over campus over 4 days.

Is it any good? The idea sounds ok but so far hasn't been enough to overcome my fear of ending up watching a load of very USAian students if they're anything like as annoying as shown in other TV shows.

I can say they're very USAian students! And yeah, they can be a little annoying, but it's a fascinating look into a very unique game. YMMV of course.

I would say the competitors are less annoying than you'd get in standard US reality TV, but to be honest I just didn't find the show all that engaging. Which is a shame, because that makes 0 from 2 for successful non–Jet Lag game/reality shows from the Wendover team. And considering how damn good Jet Lag is, I'm a little surprised.

quick edit: actually, that's 0 from 3...I forgot about Abolish Everything, which I also didn't enjoy in practice nearly as much as I thought I would in theory...especially with how often what to me seemed a clearly worse presentation ended up winning.

Abolish seemed like a US school debate version of BBC's Room 101 to me, and we tired of Room 101 after a season or two.

What's the other series you tried?

Jet Lag (including "season 0", Crime Spree). The Getaway, their traitor-style show where it's revealed to the audience but not the contestants that everyone is a traitor. Abolish Everything. The Scav.

But yeah, I definitely don't think it's a show that could have an enormous amount of staying power.

But then, I wouldn't have thought WILTY would have anywhere near the staying power it's had...and maybe it shouldn't have had.

Still, the problem with Abolish wasn't that it got stale. It hasn't even had the chance to get stale yet. It was the inclusion of some clear attempts at comedy that just fell completely flat, from a couple of the contestants but especially from the panel. The extent to which bad attempts at comedy took away from the show's conceit really ruined it for me. Add in the double-whammy that several contestants I thought were a clear last place ended up winning their episode and it just left a sour taste in my mouth. If that happens once or twice you can put it down to bad luck or mild differences in taste. When it's as frequent as it is, it's just a sign that you and the show's live audience are on such a completely different wavelength that you are clearly not the intended digital audience.