Saturday 10th January,
7:15pm UK (8:15 on the continent),
ProSieben and naughty internet streaming

Yes! It’s time for Stefan Raab to take on his fifty-first kanditdat with €1m up for grabs if the best of Germany can out perform the best of German television across fifteen mystery games.

And again we will be providing sort-of-live commentary, which doesn’t really work as live commentary because of all sorts of delays. HOWEVER it will likely be fun to listen to, and will likely feature all sorts of fun and games along the way. So why not come and join us? David J Bodycombe, Daniel Peake, Lewis Murphy and myself should all be along.

We’ll probably have all sorts of extra-curricular activities to fill the gaps during the breaks as well. Why pay the €21.50 (plus €6.50 booking fee) to watch it LIVE in the studio when you can watch it LIVE with us?

The musical turns this episode are Ella Henderson and Howard Faltermeyer Herbert Grönemeyer !

Here are the deets – note that we have a new recommendation for you after someone suggested it last commentary:

Here are all the links you need:

Here is link to our commentary (will open in a new window). This stream is commentary only. You will need to have a naughty stream running at the same time for the visuals. We are likely to be about 15-20 seconds behind the visual stream (and about a full minute behind if you’re watching an actual satellite feed), sorry.

This is the primary stream we will be watching live and basing our commentary on. HOWEVER! It is recommended you watch the back-up stream whilst listening to our commentary as that is 10-15 seconds behind our primary stream and so the commentary syncing should work out much better. If we have to switch to the back-up I’m afraid we will be about twenty seconds ahead of what you’re watching.

Follow us on Twitter for immediate news if something goes wrong. Or because we’re fun guys!!!! @bothersbar, @danielpeake, @ogbajoj, @davidjbodycombe.

First of all, keep voting in the UKGameshows/Bother’s Bar Poll of 2014! We’ve had about 75% of last year’s votes already with the best part of a week to vote, so if you haven’t make sure you do.

Meanwhile here is a cryptic tweet that might be of interest:

@BothersBar @danielpeake @ogbajoj The Schlag den Brig 3 games have been chosen!

— David J. Bodycombe (@DavidJBodycombe) January 5, 2015

You’ll probably definitely want to remember to tune in to the Bother’s Bar live Schlag den Raab-cast on Saturday night as once again we’ll be navigating our way through the world of German entertainment, this episode Raab has a €1m fortune to defend and Ella Henderson and Herbert Grönemeyer are our musical turns.

Meanwhile Tipping Point has returned. I’m not sure the doubler counters will help episodes where someone is so far ahead in round three you might as well not bother (there is of course just as much chance the person ahead will get them, more so if they get more questions correct), but we’ll see. Have they added some extra beefy clanging-sounds during the jackpot round when a counter falls now?

Alright, back to work everyone. But for those who won’t/don’t/can’t/have a TiVo, television is all new this week. NEW! Pointless. NEW! Only Connect. But more dramatically on ITV NEW! Judge Rinder, NEW! Tipping Point (with NEW! multiplier counter feature, if our understanding is correct), and NEW! The Chase. Also NEW! and nestled rather unfortunately between Tipping Point and The Chase is Fat Pets which will likely do quite badly (if it looks like filler it will rate like filler), does Tipping Point a disservice by moving it back to 3pm and hurting The Chase as likely a poor lead-in (it is ratings fact that it performs better with Tipping Point previous). Nice one.

It has been pointed out that this indeed is a filler before Mel and Sue’s new chatshow fills the slot. Ten-fifteen years ago, if you had said that Mel and Sue would be fronting the highest rated show on television people would have said you were mad, and yet with The Great British Bakeoff precisely that has happened, so you can see why ITV have jumped at the chance at Light Lunch redux. Watch the numbers for that very closely, popular chat shows are quite difficult to pull off and being sandwiched between two quizzes might not be the best place for it. We will see!

Keep voting in our poll!

Also thanks to CeletheRef for linking to the Chilean version of Avanti un Altro the other day. Who could have predicted that of all the international versions of the show we’ve seen, it’s the formatting powerhouse of Chile that seems to have adapted it the best? We will always really like the Italian show with its heavy emphasis on being aggressively entertaining and stand by the idea that a UK version could still be very big. However we would like to think that a daytime adaptation based on the lower-key Chilean model could still go down quite well:

• It features more rounds of questions and fewer “minimondo” segments. Admittedly it looks like the questions seem to be on the easier side, although we don’t know how big quiz is in Chile.
• It has lifted the best running gags from the Italian show, like the audience running on stage to mob Mr Bonus when he comes on, and the host beating them away with an inflatable club.
• It’s still silly. Host Leo Caprile is really good – there’s still lots of audience interaction (the audience is a super important part of the show which a lot of international versions don’t really get), and instead of having a Luca Laurenti style sidekick he’ll wander off set and have a chat with the crew, especially if a contestant gets an easy question wrong.
• If someone gets a “duel” with nobody to duel, they get to pick again for free.
• They show the questions on screen for the end game, which is a nice touch. The freeze doesn’t seem to come on until the last 30 seconds (300,000 Chilean pesos, or around £1.60 £320).
• The mobster character seems to take the contestant out back to ‘get shot’ if they get his question wrong, those edgy South Americans!

Anyway, take a look if you want. It’s 1 hour 30 mins with ads (1:15 without) which feels a bit long but there we are.

Alright! The first ep went out in The Netherlands yesterday and it’s already been translated (thanks and good work, whoever is responsible), if you want to watch and comment with us then this page is for you. This is where you’ll find a link for and discussion of episode one.

You can also play along with Dan Peake’s The Suspect List (links in the discussion), although given I’ve had a win and a second place good luck with that.

We’ve had loads of votes for the Poll of 2014 already, thanks for that, but if you haven’t already make sure you do!

We all like a good poll don’t we? Well handily enough there’s one happening right now because it’s time for the UKGameshows.com/Bother’s Bar Poll of 2014!