De Grootste Nederlander (2004)

Genre

documentary film

Country

Netherlands

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This series is a TV poll to find the greatest figure in Dutch history. It profiles ten candidates one by one and lets viewers vote after each episode. A disputed winner led to a public argument over the results.

civicreflectivedeliberatecontroversialearnestepisodichistorical

What happens

De Grootste Nederlander ('The Greatest Dutchman') was a public poll held in 2004 by the broadcasting company KRO of the Publieke Omroep. The series has the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons TV format. During the series, it included individual programmes on the top ten, with viewers having further opportunities to vote after each programme. The recently assassinated politician Pim Fortuyn was announced as the winner in a live television broadcast on 15 November 2004, two weeks after Theo van Gogh was murdered. This was controversial, and was said to be an "embarrassing" choice by several journalists and historians. Later it became revealed that William of Orange had received the most votes in total, but only the votes that were tallied before the end of the live programme counted (the number of calls was so large that not all could be counted before the end of the show). And thus Fortuyn remained the official number one according to the rules, as announced originally. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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