If you liked Ashton Kutcher’s hit show Punk’d, you are going to love Flash Prank.
Picture this: you’re eating at a local restaurant when an armed man storms in, threatening to kill everyone. He grabs the waitress who’s just served you as a hostage and demands everyone’s money and jewellery.
While you reluctantly remove your much-prized watch he looks at you and accuses you of trying to be “smart”, given the situation. He has the bizarre impression that you were trying to call the cops from under the table. You deny it. He insists that if you deny it again he’ll shoot the waitress. People around you say they, too, saw you trying to make the call so you again say you did not. He loses it and shoots the waitress and the people around you. Your heart stops beating; you can’t believe this is happening to you.
Before you pass out, the dead rise with smiles on their faces and the armed man warmly tells you you’re on a TV show called Flash Prank.
I’d probably kill him for real. But you have to admire this show. It makes Kutcher’s look like kids at play because on Flash Prank not a few people, but a multitude take part in pranking one person. This makes a scenario believable because even if you suspect you are being duped, when many people are involved, it is hard to pick it up.
This is the type of show Leon Schuster and his fans would love to have on DVD.
A show that comes close to Flash Prank is Scare Tactics, but with less gore and heart-stopping tricks. In most of these shows the “victims” laugh in the end as they are relieved to find the situations were staged.
Perhaps that’s a European and American thing because in SA Schuster and Desmond Dube had to prepare to be smacked in the face once they owned up to the their pranks. That was always hilarious, but hard to watch. Flash Prank has none of that, so it’s twice the fun.
• Flash Prank, Wednesday, 9pm on MTV base (DStv channel 322).