Israeli-devised bomb-defusing gameshow reaches Iran

After being sold to some 20 countries, a hit Israeli gameshow has found its way to Iran, in a near identical copy, Channel 12 reported Sunday.

The gameshow “Boom!” which aired in 2014, is a trivia show in which a team of four contestants work together to defuse a series of huge black “bombs” sitting in the center of the TV studio, with four colored wires — green, red, yellow and blue — representing answers to a series of questions.

If the contestant offers a wrong answer, and then snips the wrong wire, the bomb and studio “blow up,” spraying a foam-like material everywhere.

Channel 12, which originally aired the gameshow, under the Keshet TV name, showed footage of the bomb-defusing trivia contest on Iranian state television.

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Surprised by his creation crossing international borders, Ido Rosenblum, who hosted the show, told Channel 12 that “legal or not, in the end of the day, people — both in Israel and Iran, enjoy game shows — with bombs.”

While Iran’s version was not officially licensed, the gameshow had been sold to dozens of countries, including Argentina, France, Vietnam, Spain, Kazakhstan and the United States.

Ido Rosenblum lights the fuse on ‘Boom!,’ Keshet’s primetime game show (Courtesy Keshet)

“I never thought the words ‘Iran put its hands on an Israeli bomb’ would be so strangely flattering and amusing,” Rosenblum said, adding that culture and entertainment has “the ability to bridge the gaps and maybe even reduce tensions, in the most unexpected ways.”

Jessica Steinberg contributed to this report.