Joko & Klaas Gegen Pro7 is back on Tuesday nights in Germany, and we’ve been watching the last few series live in the Bother’s Bar Discord (do come and join, 7:15pm UK, you’re not obligated to contribute) and it has become apparent that really, nobody’s producing an equal right now. In it, Joko and Klaas, two anarchic MTV presenters a decade ago who leapt to mainstream TV and continue to bring in a young audience, are set seven challenges by “Mr ProSieben” – some against other Pro7 talent, some just to beat – the more of the first six they win, the more of an advantage they get for the seventh and final challenge for all the beans. The prize? Fifteen minutes of primetime access the next day they can use for whatever they want (within legal bounds) which they usually use for quite worthy purposes. But if they lose? The channel will punish them – make them host unusual shows, record all the break bumpers for a week, that sort of thing.

The challenges are funny, varied and inventive, frequently making good use of the projection floor, and there’s usually a pre-recorded outside broadcast one. My favourite one from last night was ‘What Does A Banana Sound Like?” where they were challenged by a pair of other Pro7 talent to a sonic duel – picking one of five things at random (first round: events, second round: fictional characters, third round: emotions), one of each pair gets thirty seconds in a soundproof booth filled with musical instruments of all kinds to prepare, then fifteen seconds to record their soundscape. These were then played back to their partners who had to guess which of the five things they were going for. This was a great challenge both from a visual perspective, and for playalong “how would you do it?” discussion. I’d like to show you this, but unfortunately they haven’t uploaded it at time of writing.

So two challenges we can show from last night though. The first involves destroying things, with the aim of doing so in such a way they can pick the heaviest fragment up which will get weighed against their opponents. The sort of thing that’d make a good Schlag den Star game, but with the benefit of not being live so you can realistically have the set-up.

Last night’s final involved turning a car around on a small platform. You wouldn’t think it would be possible to get seven minutes of entertaining television out of what is basically an extreme three-point-turn challenge (they were given five and earned an extra two minutes from winning four of the evening’s tasks), in fact looking at it you wouldn’t think the feat was actually possible, but it was actually extremely tense stuff. The stakes: 15 minutes of primetime access, or having to host nightly science show Galileo for the rest of the week.

And finally here’s one of my favourite punishments – having to do live in-vision continuity from 6am to 10pm the next day, much of which is comedy show marathons “what’s better than two episodes of Big Bang Theory? That’s right THREE episodes of Big Bang Theory!” also coming up with “Two Broke Girls, one cup” and spending the rest of the link giggling.

The only real issue is that recent editions are three hours long.

Edit: ooh, fun bonus as I tried to find this one: Stay The Fuck In My House (a parody of reality show Get The Fuck Out Of My House) – Joko and Klass have to stay in a house whilst American football players led by Evil Jared off of The Bloodhound Gang try and manhandle them out.

I’ve just extended the lease on The Bar for another two years which will take us past the twentieth anniversary on 19th April 2024 – put it in your diaries – after that we’ll see what happens, by which time something that gets 1.5m in primetime will be seen as “a massive international format sensation” I imagine.

If you didn’t watch any of FOTB Ash The Bash’s Quiz Night Live over the weekend, catch up on some of the streamed stuff on his Twitch Channel – it was such a shame the connection in the hotel was so dodgy, but some of the production put on by effective amateurs and hobbyists was sensational, and hopefully the off-air recordings will make their way to the channel in due course.

Jackbox 9 is out on Thursday.

The more observant of you may have noticed that there hasn’t been a call out for contestants for Bother’s Bar Game Night Champion of Champions, that’s because Game Night has been axed. Partly because Simon le Bon was so enthused about the Arbitrary Final we co-created that he bought the entire format out, and partly because, well, other people are doing similar things better so there’s no need for it really. Also I think the newer games go in a slightly different direction to what’s required for a good Game Night game I think.

There are possibilities that things that might once have been deemed Arbitrary Finals may get spun off into their own thing, and there’s certainly something in my head right now that has “DO IIIIIITTT” status, but then I remember I’m in my 40s now and extremely tired (although that might be the COVID booster jab I had yesterday) and it would involve effort, so we’ll see. It would have Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene pt 4 as a theme tune and would ideally be hosted by surely-due-a-daytime-quiz-career-revival Russell Grant, THAT’S how good an idea it is.

Enough self-aggrandisement. On the Discord this week Holger’s going to hopefully be streaming Joko und Klaas vs Pro7 on Tuesday night from 7:15pm UK – currently the gold standard in large scale studio challenge shows, and we’re going to attempt a watchalong of the new episode of Die 100,000 Mark Show on this coming Sunday night, although we’re relying on naughty internet streams for that like we used to have to use in the Golden Era of our Schlag den Raab coverage, so be prepared for anything to happen.

The shortlist here.

Of note: The studio entertainment category is an embarrassment of riches this year, there are about six shows on the shortlist which feel like they’d be good winners. Right now I back Stealing the Show as it’s smart and funny (even if it is, if we’re being honest, basically Richard Osman’s House of Games with a budget for set pieces) but really, despite the death of entertainment on television, it’s the first year in ages there doesn’t feel like an obvious winner.

That’s right, in a legally different format to Tom Scott’s Lateral, Lateral With Tom Scott sees (and hears) international Youtube sensation Scott and his Pleasant Youtube Chums answer Who What Where-style questions, only this time in podcast form (from your usual podcast outlets) and as a weekly Youtube video.

Episodes are out every Friday, beginning this coming Friday.

Completely unexpectedly the Gamesmaster: An Oral History book turned up at my house on Friday – I don’t think I Kickstarted it, but I got on board with the second round of pre-backing I think. I can’t remember now.

Spent all of yesterday afternoon devouring it – it’s absolutely unputdownable, even if you could basically reduce it to “look, I was in my twenties, I had an extremely successful TV show, yes I was a bit of a nob.” It has the skinny on everything – the red jacket, Dexter Fletcher (who contributes, gamely), that episode from series six, it’s not disappointing. There are also tales of high debauchery.

A couple of fun take homes for me – that Atlantis is set in the same church they set Hell in, and that series seven wasn’t meant to happen, they only discovered they were commissioned a few weeks before broadcast because everybody forgot to tell C4 at the end of S6 they weren’t going to make it anymore and most execs at C4 didn’t bother watching the show to pick up on the cues.

It’s quite expensive, but it’s a properly bound hardback. You can buy it from booksellers if you want, or Amazon.

It strikes me that there is probably good Oral History potential for quite a lot of Hewland International’s output, actually.

Well it was nice to have about a decade before the Americans decided they wanted another go and everyone blindly copies them. Anyway don’t bother commenting about it here, there’s a dedicated #netflixmolememorialthread on the Bother’s Bar Discord.