In 1962, French telly bosses, bereft after a dispute prevented the broadcast of the Tour de France, filled the schedule with their own version, called Intervilles. Live cows and bulls were among those corralled into battles of civic pride so fractious that Charles de Gaulle reportedly altered his schedule so that he could watch the weekly antics. Only in 1966 did the British get their own version. It’s a Knockout featured bizarre games, such as the one where a woman was pelted with bags of flour by opposing players while she bounced up and down on a trampoline and attempted to bat away the projectiles with a tennis racket. It’s a Knockout was never officially cancelled, but there are no plans for it to return to our screens. Gemma Chan in Humans, the UK adaptation of Äkta Människor. The 2012 dystopian Swedish drama Äkta Människor (Real Humans) posited that, in the near future, hubots (a portmanteau of humans and robots) will be bought as domestic servants, making humans redundant in many workplaces. What’s more, hubots will be illicitly hacked to become humans’ sexual partners.
