Now Get Out of That



"US Contestant: [while climbing down a bedsheet rope from a window] Hey, it's like Cinderella!

Bernard Falk: Or Rapunzel, if you will."

Now Get Out of That! was a short-lived (four five-episode seasons) competetive reality show running on BBC2 from 1981-1984. Based, originally, on an annual competition between Cambridge and Oxford, the first two seasons followed the competition between the two universities. The third and fourth seasons followed a team from the US versus a UK team.

An early precursor to Survivor-style Reality Television and an early example of Reality Television in general, the show followed two teams as they went through a series of obstacles themed around a top secret mission.

Each challenge was designed to challenge a team's critical thinking, problem solving, physical abilities, and ability to use technicalities in the challenge's phrasing to solve the problem.

The show was hosted by Bernard Falk, BBC newscaster, who provided a colorful running commentary on the show.


 * Deadpan Snarker: Bernard Falk's running commentary helps keep viewers entertained while the teams spend time trying various ideas for a challenge.
 * Death Is a Slap On The Wrist: Challenges such as finding a way to "set off an explosive" while nobody is inside the indicated "blast radius", if failed, resulted in a five minute penalty added to the team's time, and nothing else, even if within the context of the scenario, half the team would be dead.
 * Dismantled MacGuffin: One season rewarded contestants with a piece of a map after each challenge was completed.
 * Empty Room Psych: The mission: Raid the castle full of guards. Do not set off the booby trap, or you'll set off an alarm and the guards will find you.
 * Escort Mission: The final challenge of Season 4. To make it even more of a challenge, the scientist "accidentally" falls off the wall and "breaks" their ankle, forcing the team to build a makeshift stretcher as quickly as possible.
 * Loophole Abuse: Get the keys to a Land Rover out of a milk churn buried in the mud. You cannot walk past this white line.
 * MacGyvering: A number of challenges and solutions attempted in the show involve putting together items conveniently right by the challenge itself or picked up over the course of previous challenges.
 * Spy Fiction: Particularly in seasons 2-4:
 * Season 2: Recover a top secret isotope from a crashed spacecraft.
 * Season 3: Destroy a communications cable.
 * Season 4: Find and rescue a defecting scientist
 * Timed Mission: Sometimes literally, but also overall. The winning team was the one that took the least amount of time to complete the course.
 * Unreliable Narrator: Each team went through the exact same course on different weekends. The footage was then edited together with Falk commenting "meanwhile, the   team..."