You may be interested to note it’s the last ever Wetten Dass…? with Thomas Gottschalk on German television (channel ZDF) this evening.
You may be able to watch it live (including the warm-up) here from 6:25pm.
Wetten Dass…? began 30 years ago in 1981 and is one of German television’s most regarded light entertainment shows, calling it a day after a competitor badly hurt themselves on live television in a stunt involving jumping over cars. A UK version, You Bet! ran for ten series in the late eighties and nineties. Here is a feature we wrote on ther show five years ago.
The above stream didn’t work for me, but I found one here: http://www.justin.tv/wettendass
And it looks like the first guest they’re bringing out is the man who used to host the show before Gottschalk!
The first guest is a good friend of Thomas, Günther Jauch. He has hosted Wer wird Millionär? since 1999 and the show is still on air twice a week in primetime.
First bet: A guy (I can’t estimate ages worth beans, but I’d put him in his mid-20s) bets he can extinguish 100 tea candles in two minutes, using only his tongue. Conveniently, they’re arranged in a circle, and he sort of does a series of push-ups around the circle, pivoting on his feet in the center. He is successful, with about 45 seconds left. In the post-bet interview, he hath a very notithable lithp.
The second guest is Dirk Nowitzki, a German-born basketball player for the Dallas Mavericks. I’m kinda curious as to whether the NBA lockout is coming up in his interview or not.
Before the second bet, they showed the first half of the “Top 10” Wetten Dass bets.
10: The guy who identifies his cows by listening to how they chew apples.
9: The guy who throws plungers to stick to peoples’ backs. Complete with victory backflip and split!
8. The girls who make a bubblegum jumprope (long enough for a half dozen or so of them to do ten jumps).
7. The guy who races a dog in a drinking (well, lapping) contest (and loses hilariously).
6. A guy who catches flies in his mouth. I missed this one, apparently…
Second bet is a guy who bets he can identify three out of four toilets just by the sound of their flush. He’s getting his head close enough to each toilet that he might also be picking up clues from the splashing (EW EW EW). Unlike most identify-things-by-the-sound challenges, he seems to be pretty good at identifying them with only one listen. He nails it in three.
After a song by Lenny Kravitz, the third guests are Jessica Biel, American actress, and Til Schweiger, German actor/filmmaker. We’re treated to a clip of “New Year’s Eve”, a movie they’re both in.
The third bet involves a large gymnastics team (48 people) all doing backflips and landing on one small platform, all in three minutes. The entire team stacks to make a continuously changing landing pad for the next group. It’s a really close finish, as a few people from the end, someone nearly misses their mount and almost falls off, costing some time, but they pull it off.
The fourth guest is Karl Lagerfeld, German fashion designer. They take this opportunity to highlight some of Gottschalk’s interesting wardrobe choices. Also, clips of him kissing and touching a lot of women.
Interestingly, the fourth bet is someone identifying the date and location of the previous episodes, based on cardboard replicas of Thomas’s outfits being placed on a mannequin. She gets four out of five rather quickly and wins.
The fifth guest is Iris Berben, German actress. She presents Gottschalk with some handcuffs. Naturally.
More of the top ten:
5. A guy breaking open coconuts with his teeth.
4. A dog fetching toys when asked for their names.
3. Two brothers who communicate random lines from comic books by a very strange language of fart-noises. Seriously, look this one up if you have the time. It’s bizarre.
2. A kid who can identify telephone numbers just by listening to the tones as the buttons are pressed.
Oh, heck yes… Number 1 on the countdown is this gem of a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEcNyE1eYVk&feature=related
It looks like the fifth bet is going to be a snowboard v. bicycle race down a slope, but unfortunately I’ve got to leave for work now.
Well done to Ann Hegerty for comprehensively winning tonight’s edition of The Chase. No throwing the game for charity like some of the other Chasers, she played fair and square.
I’ve not watched any of the “Celebrity Chase”–not yet, anyway! (I expect to do so, but with a friend who also has become a fan of this show.)
Interesting to note that the Barrister, Shawn Wallace, has not yet put in an appearance in this near-prime-time version.
That’s because Shaun is appearing on the final show next week. I will be very surprised if Shaun does win as he is very weak with pop culture.
In not very surprising news: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/02/give-us-a-clue-pilot
Oh that’s a pity in a way, I quite liked the Dutch remake.
Wetten Dass rating from last night
Total viewers: 14.73 million (46%)
14-49 age group: 4.86 million (39.1%)