Corus Entertainment hopes they have in The Audience Canada the W Network‘s answer to Big Brother Canada, a crowd-puller for Shaw Media.

The series from Force Four Entertainment, based on a format created by The Garden and distributed internationally by ITV Studios Global Entertainment, is a reality TV show that exploits the wisdom of the crowd.

“It’s one person with a life-changing dilemma who is followed by 50 strangers for a week, and as the audience they give them a verdict at the end of the week,” John Ritchie, executive producer and partner at Force Four Entertainment, explained to Playback Daily.

Ordinary people already tap clergy, a therapist or life coaches to make life-changing decisions.

And Facebook and other social media already has close friends and family offering advice on how someone may or may not live their life.

But it was Channel Four’s original version of The Audience in the U.K. that Ritchie first saw, and which convinced him to attempt a local adaptation of the crowd-sourcing reality series for the Canadian market.

In the W series, dilemmas posed for the Canadian group of ordinary strangers to consider include whether a woman should take her last chance to have a baby, even though she has no man in her life; a young man weighs whether to seek out a birth parent; and an aspiring stand-up comic considers whether to give up on his dream.

“It will work because everyone has an opinion about other people. We all like to pass judgement, or say why should someone do this or that,” Ritchie said of the prospects for The Audience Canada.

Force Four already knows how to follow a central subject of a reality TV show considering whether to pursue a life-changing scenario. What’s new, Ritchie adds, is following 50 strangers who weigh every aspect of a protagonist’s life over a week before rendering their verdict.

“It’s challenging. We used a drone to shoot aerials, just to show what it’s like to have 50 people follow someone,” he recalled.

And 50 people can’t fit into an apartment, for example, so often times the audience of strangers was left to look in through windows. But it was just that voyeuristic quality that helped raise the stakes in The Audience Canada, according to Ritchie.

And with the Canadian adaptation allowing a second go-round for Force Four, the indie producer kicked up the pace for The Audience Canada, and added more intrigue, compared to the Channel Four version.

“It’s much easier to make a show the second time around. You punch up where it lags, and you always adapt to the local format and viewer taste,” Ritchie said.

The Audience Canada debuts on July 16 on the W Network.