Ran an den Mann

Long term readers may remember we have some history with the My Man Can, apparently a successful worldwide format based on the German show Mein Mann Kann which we did a feature on back in 2012 in prep for the UK version filming that Summer, which was allegedly so bad that despite filming six episodes they decided not to bother broadcasting them, although I saw an episode filmed and later declared that “whilst it wasn’t amazing or anything it was not really much worse than a lot of weekend evening fluff. Surely you might as well put it out in the Summer when no-one’s watching anyway?”

Anyway we were alerted  to the idea that the show had been rebooted in Germany on Sat 1 last month and it was mentioned on the recent Schlag den Star commentary so last night I thought I’d check it out (with the dark arts you can as well). The first thing to consider is that it’s got a different name – Ran an Den Man (which just translates to Ran To The Man). This is also by produced by RedSeven so presumably it’s the continuation of the same idea which ended in 2013.

The first major point of difference is that it’s set in a large arena-style studio, bisected by a split level platform – a “party lounge” where the girls sit upstairs and a cage style “cellar” where the men sit downstairs. Also noticeably the covering music has changed from “wooooaaaaah mein mann kann! WOOOOAAAAAH mein mann kann! etc” to a dance tune where a female repeats the line “what I’d do for love” endlessly. Also! Frank Buschmann off of Schlag den Raab/Star is the new commentator.

One of the biggest changes is the betting. The original show tried to ape poker to greater and lesser effect. Here it works rather differently – each of the couples is staked €10,000 to begin with and after seeing the challenge the woman places a wager. The men who have the two biggest bets put on them will compete in the challenge and the winner takes all the money bet by all five couples, including the three who don’t participate.  There’s a minimum bet for each round (3x€500, 3x€1,000, €2k, €3k, €5k) and there’s an added filip in that someone can push a buzzer to go all-in which guarantees they’ll definitely compete in the challenge and can win everything bet if they win. After round 9 the two couples with the most money compete together in one final challenge to win €50,000.

The challenges this week were pretty good in the main, more SdR-esque than the original (although now they’re all duels possibly not that surprising), beginning with punching batons through a wall to your opponents side and ending on high-stakes beermat flipping via quite fun TV Theme Tune pelmanism, jousting with lances on bikes and a French skipping memory/skill test. One of the more surprisingly exciting and tense games involved racing to try and light fifty candles around a giant ice bath having to go back and forth to a big flame with matches to light them, with contestants trying to eke out as many candles out of a match as possible.

The grand final involved each couple sitting either end of a lengthy see-saw with the man chucking sandbags to his partner in a bid to lower her end which seemed quite the relationship tester. My main issue is that the couple going into the final with more money probably should have been given some sort of headstart.

I don’t know how well it’s doing in Germany but I’d suggest it’s a decently entertaining if not especially original 7/10-ish sort of show. It has been going out on Friday nights on Sat 1.