The COVID-19 Shutdown Has Finally Hit Australia’s Most Beloved Institution, ‘The Block’

If none of this felt fully real before today, it’s sure as shit gonna feel real now: The growing COVID-19 shutdowns that are currently grinding ordinary Australian society to a screeching halt have finally wound their way to the nation’s most sacred, beloved, and dearly protected institution: The Block.

Filming on the current series of The Block has temporarily halted due to on-going coronavirus shutdowns, with producers sending contestants back to their home states before any potential full border closures are enforced, and before any possible statewide shutdown orders are issued.

Producers confirmed contestants on the 2020 iteration of the series, which is currently filming, have been sent home from the Brighton work site for an indefinite period of time.

Show creator Julian Cress told the Herald Sun that given the state of everything, the decision was made to “stop filming with the contestants and stop the competition temporarily so we could get out ahead of (any) looming shutdown of state borders and a potential full lockdown of the state.”

Contestants in this year’s season, like all previous ones, come from all over the country, and have family and children waiting back home. Cress stated that the “potential for them to be locked down in Melbourne was too much of a risk.”

Around a third of the season has reportedly already been shot, with production crews working on editing the early batch of episodes together during the shutdown.

Interestingly enough, the work sites as a whole have not followed suit in closing down completely; construction workers remain on-site, somehow, building extensions to the five houses that were transported to the site for this year’s iteration.

Bloody hell, if we can’t have The Block, what hope do we even have any more? What is a year without anyone winning the Domain walkthrough or whatever? What on earth will Scott Cam do (other than receive a $345,000 salary from the Federal Government) now?

Dark days.

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