Kaukės (Masks) is a Lithuanian reality singing competition television series based on the Masked Singer franchise which originated from the South Korean version of the show King of Mask Singer. Production was announced in November 2019.[1] The first season premiered on LNK on 13 September 2020.[2]
A group of celebrities compete anonymously on stage, singing in full costumes over a series of episodes. The competing celebrities have to sign strict confidentiality agreement and they cannot tell anybody (their friends and families) that they are competing in project Kaukės. During interviews their voices are distorted by special programs and they only sing as best as they can without any special effects. Each episode, a portion of the competitors are paired off into face-off competitions, in which each will perform a song of his or her choice. From each face-off, the panelists vote: the winners safe for the week, while the loser is put up for elimination. At the end of the episode, the losers of the face-offs are then subjected to new votes of the panelists to determine who will not continue; the eliminated singer then enters the stage where they turn their back to the camera, takes off their mask, then turn around to reveal his/her identity.
In addition to the singing competition, hints to each masked singer's identity are offered during the show. Pre-taped interviews are given as hints and feature the celebrities' distorted voices. The panelists are given time to speculate the identity of the singer after the performance and ask them a single question, or the contestant provides a clue about themselves or they bring their things as clues and panelists try to determine their identity. In the first season the winner was picked by panelists, in the second, panelists had only one option to pick the third place winner and for the last two contestants only the audience voted and picked the winner. And in the third season only the audience voted for all three contestants.
The process of contestants getting to the arena is that they are getting messages from the director as to where they need to drive to the agreed place. Later they are picked up from that place by guards in a car with tinted windows. Contestants have to put on a black hoodie and black face shield. The arena is cleared so that no people can enter there and the contestant is lead to his or her room by guards. They spend whole day in that room and they cannot leave that room alone. They have contacts to people that they can only talk to. Only five people know who competes in the project. Then the time comes for the contestant to perform, and they put on their costumes (there are helped by stylists to put on costumes) and they go to stage to perform.
Popular actor and comedian Giedrius Savickas presents the show.[3] The panel includes Vaidotas Valiukevičius, lead-singer of The Roop, radio host Livija Gradauskiene, TV host Indre Kavaliauskaite, fashion designer Aleksandras Pogrebnojus and the basketball players Darju and Krzysztof Lavrinovic. Later on season 2 Aleksandras Pogrebnojus wasn't on the panel anymore. His place took singer Monika Liu. On the 3rd season there was a new panel. Monika Liu continued as panelist and there have been 4 new panelists: singer Vidas Bareikis, singer and winner of Kaukės season 1 Rūta Ščiogolevaitė, influencer Paul de Miko and designer Robertas Kalinkinas.
On the 4th season Monika Liu and Robertas Kalinkinas countinued to be panelists and there were 3 new panelists: Toma Vaškevičiūtė (she previously participated in the first season as "Pelėda"), Simona Nainė (she previously participated as guest mask in the third season as "Ančiukas") and Stano (he previously participated and won the third season as "Burokėlis")[4]
On later episodes guest masks made an appearance by performing a song out of competition at the beginning of the show. The panel then gave their guesses before an instant reveal. The guests then occasionally joined the panel for the ongoing episode.
The masked singer won their face-off and remained in the competition.
The masked singer lost their face-off and was in the bottom three/two, but was not eliminated.
The masked singer was safe from elimination.
The masked singer was eliminated from the competition and unmasked upon their elimination.
The celebrities who competed in the first season of Kaukės, pictured in order of elimination (l-r):
Simas Jasaitis ("Banana"),Rolandas Mackevičius ("Robot", right),Žydrūnas Savickas ("Monster"),Karina Krysko ("Spider", left),Andrius Bialobzeskis ("Šakotis"),Egidijus Sipavičius ("Lion"),
