Back in the early-mid 90s, I used to spend my Summer Thursday nights watching Giochi Senza Frontiere, the Italian perspective version of Jeux Sans Frontieres, on Rai Due, back when cable used to have foreign channels. It was excellent, really lavish sets and games, and there was a Great British team as well, represented by S4C in Wales. The Family Channel rebroadcast these with new Stuart Hall commentary, from back when Stuart Hall was acceptable.
Well now it’s back in some sort of capacity! And it’s pretty much how you remember it, but with a remixed theme, slightly jazzier graphics and because it’s all coming from Italy, dance introductions.
Competitors from Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland, Greece and Russia play tough physical games whilst dressed in ridiculous costumes. Games are pretty traditional JSF (the first ep includes the legendary carry-water-over-tarpaulin-whilst-competitors-kick-from-underneath game, and a game involving negotiating a swimming pool and obstacle course in a zorb-style plastic ball except only one of the teams manages to escape the swimming pool). There’s the fil rouge – this week a sort of Funhouse-style playground obstacle course attraction (this was fun but I hope it changes from week to week) and each episode seems to end on The Champions Wall, which is especially important because it’s worth TRIPLE points and gets a lengthy dance routine introduction. Teams get a joker to play, but unlike the original teams aren’t forced to sit a game out.
It’s well produced, feels like a party. No game heat takes more than about three minutes to play (except the Champion’s Wall, where there’s a five minute limit), so I can’t say it was a boring 2.25 hrs.
We’re just trying to work out the significance of it internationally. It doesn’t seem to have EBU backing. Guy Lux is credited for the format. We don’t know if the other countries involved are going to broadcast it (each one seems to have bought its own host/commentator along who gets involved in the proceedings).
These comments from Setsenael and CeleTheRef sum our understanding of the situation up best:
That’s .. odd. Nagui is commited on a reboot of Jeux Sans Frontières, taping and being broadcast in France somewhere before summer next year. Thought they would be working together but seems it’s not the case.
And it’s quite curious – they have everything from Jeux Sans Frontières, with the remixed theme (quite nice) but not the iconic logo ? Maybe there’s some kind of licencing issue since every official communication directly name “Jeux Sans Frontières” – and to add to the complexity, Mistral Groupe who was owning worldwide rights to the format (and Intervilles), went into bankruptcy in 2017 (with all bankruptcy procedures closing dureind last June). The format rights may be somewhere in legal limbo .. or may also have been bought for super cheap by Nagui’s Air Productions, quite hard to tell.
Setsunael
Air Production is part of the Banijay Group, the company that’s making the Italian show. I’m positive that they are going to make a separate version in France.
The Italian version has a different title because RAI still owns the national rights until July 2020.
CeleTheRef
If anyone knows anything, do write in. If you want to watch, you’ll need a VPN and a sign-in to the Mediaset catch-up site.
