Long term readers may remember we have some history with the My Man Can, apparently a successful worldwide format based on the German show Mein Mann Kann which we did a feature on back in 2012 in prep for the UK version filming that Summer, which was allegedly so bad that despite filming six episodes they decided not to bother broadcasting them, although I saw an episode filmed and later declared that “whilst it wasn’t amazing or anything it was not really much worse than a lot of weekend evening fluff. Surely you might as well put it out in the Summer when no-one’s watching anyway?”

Anyway we were alerted  to the idea that the show had been rebooted in Germany on Sat 1 last month and it was mentioned on the recent Schlag den Star commentary so last night I thought I’d check it out (with the dark arts you can as well). The first thing to consider is that it’s got a different name – Ran an Den Man (which just translates to Ran To The Man). This is also by produced by RedSeven so presumably it’s the continuation of the same idea which ended in 2013.

The first major point of difference is that it’s set in a large arena-style studio, bisected by a split level platform – a “party lounge” where the girls sit upstairs and a cage style “cellar” where the men sit downstairs. Also noticeably the covering music has changed from “wooooaaaaah mein mann kann! WOOOOAAAAAH mein mann kann! etc” to a dance tune where a female repeats the line “what I’d do for love” endlessly. Also! Frank Buschmann off of Schlag den Raab/Star is the new commentator.

One of the biggest changes is the betting. The original show tried to ape poker to greater and lesser effect. Here it works rather differently – each of the couples is staked €10,000 to begin with and after seeing the challenge the woman places a wager. The men who have the two biggest bets put on them will compete in the challenge and the winner takes all the money bet by all five couples, including the three who don’t participate.  There’s a minimum bet for each round (3x€500, 3x€1,000, €2k, €3k, €5k) and there’s an added filip in that someone can push a buzzer to go all-in which guarantees they’ll definitely compete in the challenge and can win everything bet if they win. After round 9 the two couples with the most money compete together in one final challenge to win €50,000.

The challenges this week were pretty good in the main, more SdR-esque than the original (although now they’re all duels possibly not that surprising), beginning with punching batons through a wall to your opponents side and ending on high-stakes beermat flipping via quite fun TV Theme Tune pelmanism, jousting with lances on bikes and a French skipping memory/skill test. One of the more surprisingly exciting and tense games involved racing to try and light fifty candles around a giant ice bath having to go back and forth to a big flame with matches to light them, with contestants trying to eke out as many candles out of a match as possible.

The grand final involved each couple sitting either end of a lengthy see-saw with the man chucking sandbags to his partner in a bid to lower her end which seemed quite the relationship tester. My main issue is that the couple going into the final with more money probably should have been given some sort of headstart.

I don’t know how well it’s doing in Germany but I’d suggest it’s a decently entertaining if not especially original 7/10-ish sort of show. It has been going out on Friday nights on Sat 1.

Right, yesterday TV’s Greg Scott uploaded something quite interesting to Youtube, an (almost) full studio recording of a 1996 panel show based around the football pools called The X Factor.

Some of the younger readers might not know or understand the football pools, but basically they were the sort-of national lottery of their day, each week you got a coupon listing typically 55-60 matches taking place that Saturday, which would be all the main league ones English and Scottish and cup ties and whathaveyou and then using your skill and judgement (or like most people picking at random) pick ten (or more if you were willing to stake more) matches you reckon would finish with a score draw. Each match was worth a certain amount of points (3pts for a score draw, 2 for a no-score draw, 1 if it isn’t a draw) and if the best eight in your selection was worth enough points you’d win a dividend of the prize pool, the best result being eight score draws which is the jackpot.

Back in the day the pools were a really big deal with the classified results on Grandstand and the ITV News always ending on the winning numbers, and in the early nineties the jackpots were seven figures. The Football Pools still exist today although it is fair to say that the top prizes are not nearly so big, around £100,000.

The timing of this show then, in 1996, is quite interesting in that the pools where starting to decline in the face of the lottery but presumably someone at ITV saw the success of the lottery draws and wanted to try their own version and so we have this pilot where Tom O Connor challenges football expert John Helm, Countdown‘s stats-whizz Carol Vorderman and astrologist Russell Grant to use their skill and judgement to predict the numbers for that weekend’s games, with time filled with football gags and a celebrity having a go, sort of a Fantasy Football League-Lite (which had been running very successfully few a few years on BBC2 by that point). It’s kind of frothy and fascinating, there’s a large question mark as to whether this is the sort of thing anybody would watch week in week out, but to its credit it’s not completely awful.

This is a 90 minute studio tape including about 20 minutes of warm up from Greg (sound only – visuals kick in around 17 minutes). If you’ve never been to a studio recording before not much has really changed although they’re a lot slower. Also most studio recordings don’t get the host entertaining the audience whilst they type the graphics up. Surprised they didn’t have Russell Grant shuffle his tarot deck before the show and then do a fake shuffle so they could have the graphics ready.

Saturday,
7:15pm UK/8:15pm Germany,
Pro Sieben or naughty internet streaming

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Well it’s only been a month since the last one and I was rather hoping that I could just copy and paste last month’s entry verbatim for this one. But not so!

On Saturday night two celebs will battle it out over fifteen games LIVE for €100,000, the people’s favourite Elton will once again be hosting and commentary will as always be provided by Frank Buschmann. There are usually musical guests to break up the action but we don’t know who they are at time of writing which is rather unusual. Edit: Good news for fans of JORIS and Era Istrefi, for it is they.

But if you don’t fancy their commentary than come and listen to ours instead. We’ll have quizzes (probably) and gossip (possibly) while the adverts are on.

Who are the two gladiators competing this month? NONE OTHER THAN lead singer of Revolverheld and The Voice Kids coach Johannes Strate and international footballing sensation Arne Friedrich. Best of luck telling them apart in this promo photo.

Our Youtube live commentary link.
This stream is commentary only. You will need to have a naughty stream running at the same time for the visuals. We are likely to be about 15-20 seconds behind the visual stream (and about a full minute behind if you’re watching an actual satellite feed), sorry.

This is the stream we will be watching. (It’s in HD!)

Back up stream

Follow us on Twitter for immediate news if something goes wrong. Or because we’re fun guys!!!!

@bothersbar, @danielpeake, @davidjbodycombe @ogbajoj

Tschüß!

Last year’s biggest pretend hit Hunted has just begun filming and this time to go along with the £100,000 prize money the contestants are playing for this time you can earn money for tip-offs.

You can see who is currently on the run on their Twitter feed. We’re quite enjoying the disclaimer at the bottom of each wanted poster.

There is also a Youtube Channel (Hunter HQ TV Programme, confusingly) which puts out things like this:

Edit: Looks like it’s all taken down, so make of that what you will.

“Top” throw-things-against-a-wall-and-pray-it-sticks quiz format 500 Questions returns to the US for a five episode run beginning with a two hour special on May 26th – that’s just three weeks! And some of the changes involve cutting rounds to 30 questions (looking forward to the natural denouement on Round 16 2/3rds), adding a two minute speed round and stunt casting as one of the contestants on the first night is none other than Ken Jennings!

You may remember Ken from winning over $2m on Jeopardy in a 74 game winning streak in 2004 and has managed to remain Still A Thing (he’s a mildly amusing Twitter follow). With new host Dan Harris, it’s sure to Definitely Be A Success This Time.

But if you can’t wait for that and live in Germany you can watch the UK version being filmed on the German set in Koln on the 11th and 12th of May. We are aware that neither we or the Germans are taking the US version straight, the German show is also a four-episode affair like ours (theirs is also two hours an episode although we don’t know what the UK one is going to do yet) and offers a €3m top prize.

What’s baffling that we’ve heard from a reputable source that the UK version for ITV is going to be fronted by edgy restaurant critic and brother of Victoria Giles Coren, which is such a baffling choice I can only assume someone was thinking of Gyles Brandreth and got a bit confused.

Join us from 7:15pm May 7th as we guide you through yet another LIVE episode of Schlag den Star where two top German celebrities compete against each other for €100,000 under the auspices of the people’s favourite Elton and commentator Frank Buschmann.

This episode our contestants are singer and The Voice Kids coach Johannes Strate versus football coach Arne Friedrich. Musical guests to be confirmed.

We will as ever be offering up “insight”, “fun” and “games” during the adverts and boring bits.  Do watch along!