Null Gewinnt

By | July 28, 2012
3 Comments

Before we continue, don’t forget that Fort Boyard‘s on tonight and our discussion post is here. It’s not on next week (and possibly the week after) because of the Olympics so enjoy it while you can. Edit: My bad, it is on next week, not the week after.

Anyway a big thank you to Barry who pointed us in the direction of Null Gewinnt (Zero Wins, I believe), the new German version of Bother’s Bar favourite Pointless. You can watch it online here.

It works a bit differently to our Pointless, it seems to be a primetime weekly show on the German Erste Channel, so if you missed my Twitter commentary this morning, here’s what you need to know:

  • Same music as our show but very different graphics and set. The camerawork is a bit trendy, zooming in and out of the column with the answer reveals on a whim.
  • However, like the French show the background music mix is slightly too high and so you want to kill whoever is playing that bontempi keyboard sting which you will hear about 300 times during the show quite quickly.
  • Hosts are Dieter Nuhr and null gewinnt friend Ralph Caspers. Ralph looks like Richard Osman if he was crossed with David Mitchell. He is taller than Dieter which is the important thing. Also, crucial difference, his computer is turned on.
  • Three teams of two play. For each question they can confer so that they come up with one answer.
  • Teams get €1,000 for every pointless answer (which I *think* they can keep regardless of outcome) and the end game is worth €10,000.
  • First round begins with classic Pointless open ended-questions. There are three of them an each team gets to go first once. They don’t go through the best and worst answers which is a shame.
  • After that, the next three questions are “pick from a list”, again each team getting to go first. This is actually pretty good formatting I think as there is more opportunity for swing in these sorts of questions, and a high chance of some pointless answers, an implicit raising of the stakes. Similarly there’s always a reason for playing if you can’t win because of the €1,000 bonus.
  • High scorers leave.
  • The head-to-head round is best of five, although the questions sound rather more broad than they were in our head-to-head rounds – Steven Spielberg films rather than members of the Famous Five.
  • Nice graphic.
  • Losers depart it’s time for the end game.
  • As is standard they get a choice of three categories. Different to the original, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of time limit to come up with answers – contestants and hosts seem perfectly happy to be having a chat. Hosts don’t seem to know the numbers in advance so it sounds like there’s some general speculation which is quite fun (although I’m only a D in GCSE German so don’t read too much into that).
  • Contestants don’t give all their answers at once, they give an answer then we see how much it scores.

I think it’s a pretty good weekly primetime reversioning of the format that feels rather more successful and thought out than the French version (which just seemed to throw everything the format’s got at a wall and hope it stuck). Well done the Germans.

First Round Proper

By | July 27, 2012
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It’s The Olympics! Wooh!

So obviously that means we have to “do” Going For Gold, the euroquiz which originally offered a trip to the Seoul Olympics as its grand prize. Kelly suggested that it was only meant to be one series, but every year they decided to do another one and ten series later it ended.

Today at Lord’s cricket ground is the ranking round of the archery to determine seedings for the first round proper tomorrow. That’s a little bit like Going For Gold isn’t it! So to celebrate, we thank the several people on Youtube who caught the Going For Gold full Hans Zimmer/Sandy Mclellan theme montage on a Challenge repeat the other night, and it looks like GameShowFunTime had the best quality, so here it is now:

I always found Going For Gold, like Blockbusters, a bit dull when growing up. Ace theme, though.

Go and see a thing

By | July 25, 2012
4 Comments

Just had a quick look on SRO:

  • If you enjoyed 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown the first time, for some reason they’re doing it again! And they say there’s no original ideas left. Films 30th July in Manchester.
  • Tonight they’re showing a recording of Games Inc in front of an audience – it’s the new Muppet show that began as a chat show and is now a celebrity gameshow. If you go to this, do let us know what it’s like.

Steal

By | July 22, 2012
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Worth a front page mention this Sunday night, thanks to David for the heads-up – someone has uploaded an episode of Steal from 1990. This went out early Saturday evenings and got one series. In the mists of Bother’s Bar history there was a link to the Wayne Dobson fronted pilot on Google Video, although we can’t find it now.

Watching Telly: Don’t Blow the Inheritance

By | July 20, 2012
29 Comments

This films this weekend starting today. A full recording review will appear here over the weekend, but if you go we’re interested in your thoughts.

Right, I’ve seen this now. I think David Howell’s thoughts are perfectly good so I’m going to regurgitate them and add a few things to the end:

* Start delayed. They were still putting a few bits together to be honest, on an oversized set for the show despite an audience of 50-odd. Five didn’t make it to the end.
* Once we got going it flowed adequately for episode one.
* Four parent/sibling couples play the game. Three elimination rounds build up the “inheritance fund” the winner plays for.
* In round 1 (which had a jokey title, think it was “Questions Needing Answers”), it was standard Q&A, but the siblings buzzed whenever they thought their parent knew the answer. Add a grand if right, a wrong answer and it’s a grand to all their opponents. Repeat about ten times, maybe a bit more, I forgot and lost count. Team in last goes out. Cue cheesy catchphrase. (” We’ve lost a team” “It’s the end of a dream!” Yes, we chanted that bit.) ad break.
* Round 2, also with a stupid name, is the round that may decide most games. Four categories on the board, sibling picks category for parent, they have 30 seconds to get as many answers as possible from a top ten in that category. A grand for each right answer, and this was ridiculously swingy tonight. Last place goes out, catchphrase, ad break.
* Round 3 (“Clue – doh!”) works the same as round 1 except there’s three clues for each question instead of straight Q&A.
* The winner plays the endgame and this time it’s the sibling who answers all the questions. Five questions right to win the whole lot, as soon as you’ve got one wrong the money counts down at £100 every 0.4ish seconds but you’re still just trying to get five right, and they don’t have to be consecutive.
* Nearly every game will be played for something in the high teens, I reckon. Wins might vary a bit.
* It’s an hour, and it doesn’t need to be, but Tim is so funny with the contestants that the padding might almost help it.
* It’s certainly much more lighthearted than The Chase or Tipping Point.
* I’d watch it occasionally, but I think it’s more fun to watch recorded because of all the Tim Vine fun that won’t make the edit.

And now a few things I’m going to add:

  • Started recording about 2:30, finished about four. So what’s everybody else’s excuse? Good work 12 Yard.
  • Tim Vine. I love him, but he didn’t seem a perfect fit here sadly, didn’t seem quite at ease. Also his act works because it’s relentless as stand-up, it gets no real chance to build here.
  • Round two is a bit borked. The order of play is determined by money at the end of round one, top scorer first, low scorer last. This is fine where there are potentially an infinite amount of correct answers to be had. In this instance, with just ten answers available, there’s a real chance that the third team will be too far behind to even bother playing. Tension. Should be other way round really, so even if the low team stuffs up you can still build up positional play with the other two.
  • Round three goes on a bit.
  • Final is fine. I quite like it, starts off slow then could become a hi-octane money chase at any time.
  • It’s nice that 12 Yard have done a show which doesn’t require the contestants to think answers out for 45 seconds to a minute. More please!!!!
  • The title logo and coins should blow up as a visual segue.
  • It’s fine. It’s not a format to get excited about but it’s a show that basically is simple and works.