The 1000th episode of The Block airs this coming Sunday night on Nine and while reaching 1000 episodes is an incredible milestone for any television series, it was an event that almost went unnoticed by The Block’s EP Julian Cress and the production team.
Julian Cress told Mediaweek that the only reason the milestone got on their radar was because a junior staffer on David Barbour’s post-production team did the math: “One of his young assistants who works in post-production, born this century, came to him and said: ‘I think that when you get to filming the last episode of this season, or the penultimate episode, I’ve done the math and this is what it is’. He rang me and said, ‘Jules, you’re not going to believe this’. I said, ‘no, you’re right, I’m not’.”
“It was quite a surprise, but a very happy one.”
Cress admits that it was humbling to discover that they had produced that many episodes and that having only discovered that the show had reached 1000 episodes after the bulk of recording on the season was done, they don’t have a party scheduled.
There are no plans to quickly pop down to the Cheesecake Shop to get something to celebrate.
“We haven’t had the time to do it yet, but perhaps when it goes to air, we’ll get together and we might crack a bottle of champagne,” Cress said. “I’ll see if I can find something from 2003, when the first episode went to air.”
Obviously, when the show started there was no expectation that the show would go on for as long as it has or to still be as big as it is after so many years. At a certain point, surely Cress and the team felt as comfortable as one can be in the industry that the show will keep going on. Cress disputes that as an idea.
“We’ve never taken anything for granted with regards to the longevity of the format on Australian screens. A lot of effort goes in every year to try to consider what it is that we could do with this show to reinvent it in a way that would appeal to an audience that’s seen it before. It’s incredible and very gratifying to us is that we’re now meeting people who are telling us that their parents loved watching the show when they were kids, and they now love watching the show as well.”
That the show has produced this many episodes and has run for as many years as it has, you’d also assume that Cress would be itching to do something else. But The Block is unique in that it isn’t just producing a TV program, but it is also the project management of houses being built as well. Cress continues to be passionate about the show because it leaves behind a physical reminder of what they worked on.
“The legacy of the show isn’t just the number of episodes that we’ve made, the number of episodes of TV. It’s also the fact that every time we finish doing a show, we’ve built five more beautiful homes. We’ve renovated apartment buildings and old picture theatres and motels,” Cress said.
“We’ve built brand new houses this year that will be the gateway to Daylesford for a very long time. What we leave behind us isn’t just ratings and memories for people who watch the show. It’s actual houses that we’ve built from scratch with our contestants that are going to be homes to people for generations to come.”
When you talk to Cress about The Block, he will talk about those working on the show as being like a family. It is a multigenerational show with kids of earlier production team members now working on the show. And he has jobs for his own kids eyed on the show should it continue long enough.
It’s that sense of family and legacy that lives on in The Block. These houses have been built for a TV show, but people will be living in these homes for decades to come, growing with families, starting families, building entire lives all because of this reality TV competition show.