The Mole is about to start a new season here in the US, after an absence of several years. I hadn't heard of it before and was about to come here proclaiming that clearly it was inspired by deception-themed party games we've covered on The Gameshelf, such as Werewolf and Shadows over Camelot, but Wikipedia tells me that the concept is many years older than the latter game and rather contemporary with the former's invention. (Though it could certainly be informed by Mafia, Werewolf's progenitor.)
It still strikes me as a potentially fascinating reality show concept - I especially like that the TV-viewing audience doesn't know who the "traitor" is, either. I'm quite curious to see how well it works in execution. Any "Mole" fans here? (For the record, my favorite reality show - indeed, the only one I can watch without feeling dreadful - is Top Chef, which is a straight-up competition featuring a group of talented individuals doing what they love, as opposed to a group of random folks playing arbitrary games and encouraged to backstab each other and otherwise generate teh drama on the way to victory. Though I do wish they'd lay off the super-obvious tension-adding editing. And retire the screeching "Uh oh something bad just happened" sound effect. Anyway.)
Speaking of television, please accept my apologies that the most recent episode is taking a long time to come together. All my spare attention's lately taken by that mysterious game-related project that popped up in March and will likely take me the rest of the summer to complete, much less talk about. I went into this year hoping that I'd be able to produce a lot of episodes, but circumstances (which is to say, my own habit of leaping at shiny, shiny opportunity) dictate otherwise for now. Still, the show will be done when it's done, and then will suddenly appear in the RSS feed as usual. Hurrah for surprises!
I watched an episode of The Mole and couldn't get into it (though I remember liking Anderson Cooper, in his pre-CNN days). I did watch the first Celebrity Mole (won by Kathy Griffin) which was amusing, but still not that great a game-- there just wasn't enough information available for the contestants to make strategic decisions (or for viewers to second-guess), so it seemed pretty much random. But then as you know I'm no fan of Werewolf so take my opinion with a grain of salt.