We looked at some Dutch shows last week, this Sunday let’s look at a French one. It’s one we’ve mentioned in comments before, but because France tends to geoblock its stuff it’s difficult for people in the UK and abroad to watch. It is likable word game Harry.
Broadcast weekdaily on France 3 and hosted by one-time weather forecaster and Richard Ayoade lookalike Sébastien Folin, Harry is basically that round of Brainteaser where the words are split up into bits and rearranged and you’ve got to find the word done as a half hour show and led by cheeky computer character Harry.
Four players compete, one of whom is the current champion who will select the category in the first round. In round one Harry will flash up bits of words in moving rings, the contestants must piece together the word on their touchscreen and confirm it as fast as possible – twenty seconds max, and a clue is given halfway through the time. Contestants are scored 5, 3, 2 and 1 point if they are correct based on speed of response – 0 points if you are wrong. The sixth and final question in the round is worth double points, the lowest score is eliminated and the points are reset between rounds.
Round two changes from show to show. It plays similarly to round one but there will be an added wrinkle – instead of letters one of the rings will show a picture and you’ll have to translate what letters it represents in your head when coming up with the word. Or the letters in one of the rings will be invisible. Or one of the rings will be fake. Wiki suggests one variation they introduced recently is a round where you make words without vowels. The category for each question is given before the letters comes up and again a clue is given halfway through the time. Points are 5, 3 and 1 point, doubled for the final question. Lowest score leaves.
Round three (the semi-final) is a buzzer round. A clue is given before each word, but now the elements of the word appear every few seconds. Buzz in if you think you know what it is, a right answer scores a point, a wrong answer lets your opponent see the rest. It’s best of nine.
The winner is the day’s champion and gets to come back tomorrow. For now they will play the final where they can win up to €2,000. Harry will flash words played straight for 80 seconds. Every time the contestant gives a right answer they move up the money ladder, every time they give a wrong answer or don’t respond within eight seconds they go down the ladder. Wherever they are at the end of the 80 seconds is what they get to keep. It’s actually fairly difficult, but the show’s best player (Michèle) won €24,100 across 27 attempts.
It’s fairly stylish for a daily show. Youtube!
It’s a shame there’s no real call for 30 minute shows over here at the moment really, it’d be too sleight for a longer timeslot. I tried to find the show’s original pitch tape which seemed to have quite different rules, where the amount of points you got converted into a better chance of being drawn in a lottery to decide who went forward through the next round, but I can’t find it now. Which may be for the best.
Unfortunately France Televisions geoblocks their catch-up service. But if you can get round it, new episodes are available to watch here.
If you missed any of the Going Dutch series this week, you can use our exciting catch-up service to watch again:
Monday: Met het Mes op Tafel
Tuesday: Twee voor Twaalf
Wednesday: Per Seconde Wijzer
Thursday: Lingo
Friday: Wie Ben Ik?
That was a fun little show. The interchangeable second round inevitably keeps it fresh. Only based on the above clip, I don’t know if the titular Harry plays enough of a central part in proceedings to warrant having the entire show named after him. Is that just a thing the French like? As well as spontaneous music and dancing?
Paired with another half-hour show, I’d be very content with this over here, particularly if we can get Richard Ayoade to host it. Pointless holiday substitute?
I really don’t like this show (this kind of games bore me too quickly, it just isn’t my cup of tea), but without considering, what kind of things I like, the major issue I have with the show is Harry. There is no Harry, at least we get to hear about him (though it seems really female to me) only about 5 times per show and it doesn’t have a proper character. It’s meant to be cheeky, but it’s not really cheeky. They’d need a real character to make this show work for me. If Harry was a great guy, I’d might watch it whenever I have nothing else to do…
The interesting thing is that currently DCeDL, Harry and Slam! are currently in an afternoon block on France 3, and it sounds like DCeDL is really suffering and the two new kids on the block are doing very nicely.
I went to a pilot of a show called Cash Cube years ago hosted by Shaun Williamson and had comedy actor Steve Furst as the voice of the Cash Cube. It wasn’t very convincing to be honest. I don’t doubt a Uk production would play Harry up a bit more but they’ll be a point when it becomes a turn-off.
I might do a thing on Slam at some point. I like it a bit less than some people, but it is fairly popular.
Kind of a hodgepodge of what you get, but worth checking out: http://www.youtube.com/user/france2replay6/videos
Used to only have France2 stuff and now has expanded to France3.
Ooh, I’ve found a clip of the one and only Jacques Antoine and the French version of his counting-banknotes-while-being-mildly-distracted show, Je compte sur toi. Jacques himself appears about two minutes in.
Seems like a pretty timeless format, though maybe better suited to late-’80s / early-’90s ethics and mores than those of today.
Funnily enough, there’s a format that went round MIP last week called Grab It, Hold It, Count It which uses the idea as an end game – teams play Cash Crash style games to amass money, the team with the most money gets two minutes to count it whilst being distracted, the nearer they are, the more they take home. And if they’re bang on they win ten times the amount.
Je Compte Sur Toi was basically never won apart from once and it was such a tragedy they made damn sure it was never won again, so I read somewhere. Nice find, esp. of the French clips – Jocelyn Hattab has the Italian opening on his Youtube.
I saw that in the Week and, after a few tends of seconds’ thought, came to the conclusion that all the shows apart from world’s-greatest-show better-than-anything-in-France-or-the-Netherlands nailed-on-Golden-Fiver-winner Take On The Twisters were (albeit very convincing) Weaver parody. So he wasn’t joking?
Nope. Most of them have trailers on C21:
http://www.c21media.net/screenings/
Crikey.
Betting starts for the winner of this prestigious title in 2014 here, and I suggest that with judges that skilful and perceptive nobody need look even one round of a format past The Crazy Cow.
Nailed on.
And I don’t know if it was the same show or not- but here’s something on the Hattab YT page that involved counting while distracted…
http://youtu.be/bOYAHCQp66M
Ah, OK, not the same show but definitely reusing the same idea, that’s from 7 Per Uno (7 to 1) according to the info, which was a kind of sequel to the original Italian Grande Giochi dell’Oca. I do like the Coinstar element.
I’ve been in Croatia for the last week. A couple of observations:
1) Their version of Pointless makes you really appreciate Armstrong and Osman – while being almost presentationally identical to the UK version, the hosts had had a severe charisma bypass…was tedious to watch, regardless of the language barrier.
2) They had Rai Uno in the hotel – was amazed L’eredita is still going, although the game seems to be fairly heavily tweaked every time I see it (which appears to be proven out by the show’s Italian Wiki – has a format ever had so many revisions?)
I believe l’Eredita is watchable online through the Rai site as I watched a few last year. Haven’t seen any of the new stuff though.
I know the Guillotine finale was floating round as its own format at one point, there was a pilot filmed with Dr “Neil” Fox.