Mafia the Reality Show? (Non-Mafia players be warned!)

[Laddy]

Do you think it could work? Having people come on the show and try play mafia for television. I think it would be fun and entertaining and would certainly be more entertaining and cerebral than a lot of other reality shows.

Here are the problems with it though.

1. It would be hard to decide on how to portray the contestants. Should we or should we not know their roles? How much should we see them as people as opposed to players? It would be cool if a particularly nice person ended up being Mafia or vice versa, but how much should each individual's personality be emphasized?

2. Assuming they really play by the day, the game could end up being really short or really long, making it difficult to broadcast based on amount of episodes. However, regardless it would likely be 4-10 episodes depending on the size.

3. The concept is awesomely self-aware cheesiness, should the show keep said self-aware cheesiness?

To me it could be genuinely good television in a Survivor-meets-Clue sort of way, but how would it be handled?

So, would you watch a show based on Mafia? :O

[Miriel]

Well they had that show The Mole. Kinda like mafia.

I'm not sure how well a full blown Mafia game could be translated into a TV show. Even when you play Mafia in real life, you don't play it with all the crazy ass roles and rules that you play with online. Real life Mafia (as far as I've ever experienced) has only ever had 4 roles: cop, doctor, citizen, mafia. I would definitely check it out if it were on TV though. I pride myself on being able to figure out characters/plots of most TV shows.

Except The Killing. But that's just because the actors themselves weren't even told which one of them is the killer.

[Laddy]

It could just be like a vote-off with the player leaving and having their role announced.

[Jiro]

I would like the lynchings and night kills to be stylized. So like you actually pseudo hang some one, and at night the mafia dress up and kick the trout out of someone.