Thanks to Setsunael for flagging this up on a forum elsewhere, it’s Les Bon Gènies, France’s very French version of Match Game (i.e. Blankety Blank) It is, of course, hosted by the legendary Patrice Laffont, and this clip comes from 1996.
France 2 été 1996 Les Bons Génies – jeu télé
Uploaded by GregTV. – Videos of family and friends from around the world.
And something found on YouTube (by someone else!) It’s only the last 20 seconds or so we’re interested in, which is a preview of Monday’s preview of the new Wipeout course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CK3EQjxTR0
Sweeper Launch Pads can be seen in the background.
Just a few thoughts about In It To Win It while watching it to make it a bit fairer.
1) Scrap the Waiting Area part of the game and just have all 5 players on Winners’ Row.
2) Dale then has a brief chat with each player before their first questions to get them out of the way.
3) When a player slips up, they go to the Red Area. If they get their Red Area question wrong, they leave the game.
If the rules were like this, it would eliminate the all too common scenario of someone getting to Winners’ Row without having answered any questions in the main game yet taking away a share of the pot.
Unfortunately you’re confusing “fair” with “just” as many people do, here. The whole point of In It to Win It is that you have to be in the right place at the right time, and really the show thrives on the many and varied and hilarious unjustified results.
I just wish they’d push the questioins up to £6k, so the shares all finish with a nice round number.
Also I wish Red Area questions weren’t practically all gimmes, it’s not really very exciting when they get ti right 95% of the time. For me, at any rate.
I suppose a top prize at £120,000 is too much for the BBC/12 Yard to cough up once in a blue moon, We both know the Dutch did have each question at €3,000 each to make maths simple.
You’re right about the Red Area, I reckon the producers are trying their hardest to make contestants return to Winners Row. In a way, if more people answer the Red Area question right, it increases the odds for somebody new to come across. Tonight’s was a classic example. Then again, from what happened last week it was more like 5% of people were answering the Red Area question correct.
Anyway, the real reason why it’s £5,000 per question is if they give away any reoccuring amounts (like tonight’s £13,333.33 share), Dale can spend his penny.
I just wish the show didn’t exist – most frustrating quiz show of all time IMO. There’s actually probably a good format in there somewhere, but ruined with all the pointless dithering over questions where people obviously know the answer anyway. Just get on with it!
If you’d have asked me five years ago if In It to Win It would still be on in five years’ time, I’d have probably laughed at you. And yet even now its ratings seem to be increasing! And for all its faults, I’ve made my peace with it so best of luck to it, really.
Still one of the worst Lottery game shows though. How this got recommissioned over Winning Lines is really beyond me.
Surely Big Ticket, Millionaire Manor and This Time Tomorrow were many, MANY times more worse?
I had the sense to avoid the last two, but I think Big Ticket was better than it got credit for. I guess it kind of suffered by being the first lottery game show and the dodgy link up with the scratchcards, but I’d still rate it amongst the best lottery shows rather than the worse.
And Travis makes a good point about Winning Lines and other factors seeing it reach it’s end. The Talking Telephone Numbers format is soon to get some sort of revival on ITV (though in the desperation to get more calls, you’ll only have to match 2 out of 6 digits from your phone number), so it’ll be interesting to see how that does.
It could be because it required a less workforce. IItWI didn’t need 49 people answering the phones, inviting 49 contestants down the studio each week or a massive studio. The real reason why the final series only lasted six shows was down to The X Factor wanting the same studio for their live shows, otherwise it would’ve had a longer run.
To be fair, yes, we all know Wonderwall is the best endgame but it was getting predictible towards the end. Five out of the six contestants on that series managed to get twenty answers inside three minutes. Having the show extended to 45 minutes didn’t help as all they did was extend the first round but dragged on. Winning a holiday, three weeks around the world isn’t that wow come 2004, It’s all about winning money. Jet Set was still around until 2007 but they had the millionaire’s experience. If Celador tweaked the Wonderwall rules back then, and had a cash prize, it could’ve been on longer.
I know you’re not happy with Total Wipeout but as with In It to Win It, both shows are capturing the Saturday night audience. Last night’s show was the second most watched programme on the day (6.38m, 26.7%), only losing out to Mr Hill. The reasons why IItwI is so popular is down to the contestants are happy on the show, there is no bitter rivalery, people at home has a laugh and moan when contestants say silly answers (last week summed it up), everybody can join in and more importantly, everybody loves Dale Winton. Even Dale has admitted from the previous lottery shows he presented, IItWI is the best he’s hosted. My mum loves the show and ever since I introduced it to her in 2003, she has not missed an episode. A firm family favourite in the household.
If the show does get comissioned for 2012 (Dale is contracted for two years, 2010 and 2011) then it will hit the ten year milestone. Not many shows in this current climate (especially on the BBC) can brag about that.
So Winning Lines was perhaps coming to the end of its natural lifespan when it was dropped, eh?
Kesh, most game shows isn’t fair nowadays. Even Who Dares Wins is designed you could play for the money without playing any lists.
That is fair, though – Part of the strategy of the show is knowing when to stop bidding, and bluffing your opponents into bidding too high. Same way as managing to steal the pot with nineteen keys is fair, or winning a poker hand with absolutely nothing is fair, or managing to get a firstpick Jace in a Worldwake draft*… I think Brig might have nailed it with ‘fair but not necessarily just,’ although I’m not entirely sure about that, due to some players not getting to play at all. Fair but not necessarily just would be Killer Bunnies Quest For The Magic Carrot, where the winner is the person who acquired the golden carrot, even if they only got one carrot and someone else got all the rest… Although I’m not convinced anymore that In It isn’t fair, I just think it’s more arguable than Killer Bunnies…
*Not me, though someone pulled it off in my Pod on Friday.
I like “fair but not necessarily just” so much I’ve made it the tagline. It basically sums up the genre from Weakest Link onwards.
I would love to hear Iain’s take on this. If “game shows reflect changes in wider society, and don’t act as a leader of thought”, does this reflect an increased preference over the past fifteen or so years in society for fairness over justice? It feels more like a stray data point than a societal phenomenon to me, but I could well be wrong…
Ooh, tricky question. This all hinges on what people reckon to be fair (free from bias) and what is seen as just (morally right), but that’s another can of worms.
Should society be regulated to be *fair*? Should society be regulated to be *just*, and if so, according to whose moral code? Where should the line be drawn: at the middle? at the point where most people consider justness to be done – and how many is “most”?
This comment box isn’t going to be large enough to contain my thoughts, and I don’t have fully developed thoughts at this early stage.
Well, tonight’s episode of In It… was much less scrappy than last week’s, and it can’t be all that often that all five contestants are in Winner’s Row when the klaxon goes.
None of them came across as being seriously dislikeable – they certainly weren’t anything like Charlie last week – but I wonder how many viewers will have been impressed by Lucy’s intention to show that just because she’s blonde and pretty doesn’t mean she’s dumb?
Of the three questions she faced, the two she got right were both on geography, and both were pure guesses. The one she didn’t get right, though, was rather rotten – even I wasn’t aware of the word ‘epilation’ beforehand, and needed to Google it to see which of the choices was right. Without any disrespect whatsoever to Susie Dent, I’d say she probably wouldn’t have needed the choices…
So Lucy probably didn’t prove there and then that she’s not dumb, but I was happy that she won £13,333.
I would have thought “epilation” was a word known to every woman old enough to enter a quiz show.
It looks like some kind soul has uploaded Games World Live on one of those square, torrent type websites tonight,
Great spot thanks Travis, pity they’re Andy Collins eps and not Phil Edgar-Jones ones. Or Mick Brown. Still, JEREMY DALDRY (of Game Zone and recently of that Jim’ll Fix It revisited thing)! Amazing.
On another note. Well done to Take Me Out for hitting the 5 million mark last night. I won’t be surprised if it does get recomissioned since it has got a cult following online and by word of mouth.
Just had a look at the responses to my post on Saturday about IITWI, and it seemed to kick off quite a good convo. I’m fully aware that most game show formats aren’t fair these days and have that ‘greed’ element, such as Divided, Golden Balls, et al, and I guess I’m a firm believer in fair play, just like most of us do.
Oh, I certainly believe in fair play, as in I dislike cheating, etc. I just don’t think that the ruleset needs to guarantee the same chances to everyone for ‘fairness’ – To do so would eleminate asymetric games (Blockbusters, for example, also Chess With Different Armies (Would have used a less obscure game there, but I don’t think I’ve seen the ruleset for any, though I think one of the LotR expansions turns the coop game into a ‘one vs the mob’ style asymetric game)) and games and gameshows with chance (Deal or No Deal, for an extreme example. Also 19 Keys and Press Your Luck for gameshows. Outside of gameshows: Carcassonne.).
The only reason In It bothers me at all is that the chance element there applies before contestants get a chance to play, which outside of, say, Fluke, where it being all luck is the entire point, never fails to bother me.
I particularly like the wheel on Frenchety Blanque, and the way that the pointer rotates around the outside, rather than the pointer staying fixed and the wheel spinning. Cute.
Actually, it has been stolen from Match Game ’90 – in fact, all gameplay has been taken from MG 90. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LprI4ynRL4
Fun fact : in the early episodes , that wheel was not correctly fixed , and could easily spin for 30-45 seconds long , usually provoking some jokes from Patrice and the other panelists.