The Biggest Loser UK

Host

Vicki Butler-Henderson (2005-6)

Kate Garraway (2009)

Davina McCall (2011-2)

Co-hosts

Fitness trainers:
Mark Bailey (2005-6)
Angie Dowds (2005-11)
Richard Callender (2009-12)
Charlotte Ord (2012)
Rob Edmond (2012)

Broadcast

Shine for LIVINGtv, 6 October 2005 to 27 December 2006 (23 episodes in 2 series)

Shine for ITV1, 27 April 2009 to 13 March 2012 (57 episodes in 3 series)

Synopsis

Overweight contestants live together, cut-off from the outside world, as they are put through a strenuous exercise regime. During their stay, contestants must complete weekly tasks, cook all of their own meals, and stare temptation in the face as they are offered unhealthy treats.

A Digital Beginning

The original format saw twelve individuals split into two teams of six and they will be trained by a fitness trainer. The red team is trained by the no nonsense Angie Dowds and the blue team is trained by the kind nurturing Mark Bailey. Both teams have two goals to achieve, lose weight as much as possible and succeed in a challenge to gain immunity from elimination. For the team that lost a challenge, they would have to face elimination in the weigh in and the person who has lost the least amount of weight is eliminated from the competition. This carries on until there are three contestants left where they can now free to go back to the outside world, but the competition is not over for them as they have a number of weeks to lose weight as there is a cash prize of £25,000 for the one that's lost the most calories. There's also a prize for the eliminated contestant who's lost the most calories since their elimination, which is a Caribbean trip.

The show came at a time where viewers were starting to get sick of reality shows and to have a programme where the contestants journey is losing weight didn't really help fix the problem and wasn't really anything ground-breaking. LIVINGtv, a channel aimed at a female audience, saw promise in the show and commissioned an eleven week run for the Autumn, which is quite a ballsy move for a digital channel owned by Flextech, who also owns Challenge TV. Despite a risky bumper commission for a first series, it did pay off as it was quite well received and a second series was commissioned but was less successful than the first series. Flextech was going through a rebrand shortly after the end of the second series and was renamed Virgin Media Television in February 2007. This also meant a slight change in content and a third series of The Biggest Loser UK wasn't commissioned.

A Terrestrial Return

A couple of years after its run on a digital channel, terrestrial channel ITV gave the show another chance during the spring of 2009, where it became simply, The Biggest Loser, dropping the 'UK' part from its title. This time, it was a couples format where in the first few weeks, eights couples would take part and the amount of weight they've lost will be combined and the two couples that did the worst would have to go through an elimination process where the safe couples would vote on who should be eliminated from the competition. Oh, and there were also challenges as well where the winning couple would be immune from elimination. After the first few weeks, the couples are split up into two teams just like the first two series where the black team is trained once again by Angie Dowds and the blue team is trained by a new trainer named Richard Callender. The rest of the series is the same except the cash prize for the winner has been lowered to £10,000, although the cash prize wasn't the show's aim in the first place, it's was about the journey of losing weight, which is what the show was all about.

And if you thought LIVINGtv's bumper commission of eleven episodes was a risky move, ITV commissioned 40 episodes for the new series stripping across the Monday to Friday daytime slot of 4pm, which is quite unfitting to put a reality show that went head to head with Deal or No Deal on Channel 4, which was dominating in the ratings.

Sensibly, ITV learned their lesson and decided to recommission another series, but this time as an eight week run in a primetime slot of 9pm on Mondays at the start of the year during the winter months. The cash prize was reverted back to £25,000 as well as a Caribbean trip for the eliminated contestant that lost the most weight after elimination. Halfway through the run, controversy arose when trainer Angie Dowds was removed from the programme for telling the contestants to crash diet rather than eating healthily while losing weight through exercise. Eventually she apologised the following week and was invited back to the final. An average of four million viewers tuned in to watch the fourth series, which is a massive improvement over the disastrous daytime series and a fifth series was commissioned the next year.

The fifth series that aired again at the start of the year during the winter months again in a primetime slot of 9pm, but this time in the dreaded Tuesday night slot, which ITV may live to regret as Tuesday nights don't tend to do well in that night. The fifth series introduced two new trainers who are Charlotte Ord and Rob Edmond, Richard Callender reprised his role for a third consecutive series. Angie Dowds who was a trainer for the show's entire run up to last year's series, committed suicide a month before transmission of this year's series, the first episode was in dedication to her.

Sadly, the average viewing figures for the fifth series were almost half of last year's series, which is a bit of a shame because of ITV's incompetence to move a moderately successful show that performed well in a previous slot the previous series decided to self destruct it within one poor decision in the scheduling department, which came to no-one's surprise that ITV decided to axe it in September 2012.