Some (late) back to school fun, here’s an episode of Beat the Teacher that was uploaded yesterday (Neil Miles’ channel very much worth a subscribe if you like your TV archivery).

I used to really like this as a six year-old. It gives away a surprising amount of cash for an afternoon kids TV show, albeit as schools equipment vouchers (one of the teachers on the leaderboard has earned over two grand, incredibly). Fun questions. I had forgotten how powerful the Joker could be – effectively levelling the game for the child (I wonder how many times the teachers used theirs?).

We may never know the thinking behind getting the lead singer of Manfred Mann to front a TV schools quiz.

Congrats to Possessed for winning the Rose D’or for best gameshow for Pick Me! Frankly not last year’s best gameshow but certainly the best of the three final nominees.

Although seeing as Possessed are effectively the Bother’s Bar All-Stars I expect international format awards to be won at a bare minimum.

Anyway more importantly I said it would happen, just as I said Pointless and Wild Things would win the last few years. Alongside the annual Christmas Day TV bet (long odd wins the last two out of three) it’s a great time to be me frankly. You don’t have to like it, just accept it.

As Chris M Dickson suggests:

The only way this could have been better would be if you had found (e.g.) some Danes to bet against on it.

If only.

Also well done the entirety of the Eurovision Song Contest for winning their award for entertainment show, although I note the real winner, Petra Mede, was not there to collect the award.

That’s right Star Schlaggers, join us this Saturday from 7:15pm as we attempt to educate, inform and entertain as professional dancer Massimo Sinató battles national side Handball goalkeeper Andreas Wolff for Elton’s €100,000 suitcase. They both have a beard but one’s got a hat and the other looks suitably intense. Music will be provided by hip-hop artists den Absoluten Beginnern and Felix Jaehn feat. Alma. My favourites! And during the boring bits we’ll have our usual larking about I’m sure so do join us!

In other news schools quiz Top Class with Susan Calman starts on CBBC today at 3:55pm, and Dara O Briain’s Go 8 Bit returns with Marcus Brigstoke and Gina Yashere tonight at 10pm on Dave.

Finally here’s the Australian take on Strike It Lucky, which is what happens when you take the format seriously. It’s interminable. I quite like how the theme is a bit like our theme but with the notes in a different order.

So RTL Plus started last week, a new German channel aimed at mid-40s females offering up reruns of court shows and new versions of old quizzes, beginning with Jeopardy and Familien Duell right now with Glucksrad and Ruck Zuck following later.

Interestingly they’re all filmed on the same set, reconfigured as necessary. If you want to watch them you will need to point your VPN at TV Now.

Jeopardy is the more interesting of the two current offerings. The podiums feel teeny tiny (perhaps tellingly when they reveal the Final Jeopardy responses they’re done in a box-off). They use the US music and stings, although I think the stings need to be mixed a bit higher.

Yeah sorry, I took this whilst watching from the sofa.

Two points of note. First of all the clues are in the main quite lengthy – this example is by no means the longest on offer. The font size scales to fit the screen. Perhaps unsurprisingly they only got through about 60% of the clues in Doppel Jeopardy.

Secondly the clue values are weird in a way that I can’t quite determine if it’s ingenious or madness: €10, €20, €50, €100, €250 as standard. Ignore the fact that this is budgeted for a digital channel (it feels like all these games have a average prize budget of around €3,000 an episode) that is one top heavy board. On the one hand, €250 has never felt so exciting. On the other hand €250 is the only one that really seems to matter. It is interestingly telling that in the episode viewed the contestants shied away from selecting the top-tier question in most cases.

Familien Duell (Family Fortunes/Feud/whatever) is mainly very pink. It keeps the original German theme and sound effects and piggy bank motif, and seems to offer €6,000 daily with returning champions.

I’m certainly looking forward to seeing Glucksrad as that was one of my favourite German shows in the nineties (and probably my favourite version of the format full stop). Right now the channel is free to air but will be going behind a paywall in due course. It sounds like many of these shows will get an airing on the main RTL channel at weekends.

We always found Blockbusters actually a bit dull but we appreciate a good title sequence, and Blockbusters‘ titles were amazing.

Anyway our chum John has tracked down a copy of the annual with a behind the scenes look at how they were created and it’s too good to get lost in the comments, so here’s the link.