He plans to beat them at their own game. In this new five-part series, NBA star athlete Shaquille O'Neal competes against premiere athletes such as swimmer Michael Phelps, tennis player Serena Williams, boxer Oscar De La Hoya, baseball slugger Albert Pujols and beach volleyball players Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. There's no money at stake in Shaq Vs. (ABC, Tuesday at 9 p.m.), just bragging rights (but if O'Neal loses the Treanor/Walsh match up he's also got to run around in a pink Speedo). As O'Neal, 37, is an entertainer and an athlete, this series has more potential than his last one, Shaq's Big Challenge, a reality show no one remembers from 2007 in which he counselled fat kids to lose weight. This time the 7-foot-1 athlete gets playful as he negotiates a handicap to level the playing field, then holds a trash talkin' press conference before the big event, which is taped in front of rowdy crowds. "Our real hope is you come for the absurdity, but you stay for the sport," John Saade, an ABC executive told USA Today.
O'Neal squeezed in the taping of this summer series before beginning what may be his last year in the NBA. He thought the cross training would be a good way to get ready for training camp (and certainly good for publicity). O'Neal reached out to his opponents himself on his Twitter account. Lance Armstrong is apparently interested, but soccer star David Beckham turned him down, after a bit of trash-twittering. SuperBowl winner Ben Roethlisberger was game, too. O'Neal's gridiron challenge with the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback launches the series Tuesday night.
More reality There Goes the Neighborhood (Sunday, 9 p.m. on CBS, OMNI) This series, which started last week, is like Big Brother, but you're cut off from the outside world with your entire family, along with several other families. No phone, Internet or TV, and a six-metre wall surrounds the seven households in small-town Georgia. They'll do anything to win the big cash prize and this week compete in a scavenger hunt which lets them search for items in each other's houses.