Oh, how fun, a new Youtube channel from Mister Doc has been uploading some interesting old things in recent weeks but we really hit the jackpot yesterday – the very first episode of You Bet!
It is fair to say that we are not quite in imperial You Bet phase here, and looking back at it it’s amazingly weird for such a big show. Brucie coming down in a lift! The inaugural You Bet rap! The completely out of place chat show element they dropped in favour of another challenge in later series! Well I say out of place, they’re sort of aping the German show a little bit there I suppose, but it feels out of place in this context. It also doesn’t have the classic theme that we all know and love, instead the original is by Alan Lisk (who went on to do the theme from Men Behaving Badly), but you can certainly hear where the inspiration for Jonathan Sorrell’s music came from. Also it’s interesting and pleasing that there’s no attempt to hide the artifice of television here – cameras and staff in shot at every opportunity. We’re not quite in the You Bet Betsie stage, but I forgot they called the award an Oscar, can’t imagine The Academy were too thrilled with that.
This went out in February 1988 and I would have been 6, but I do distinctly remember Richard Digance’s builders vs artist challenge from when it originally went out, it’s funny the stuff you remember isn’t it?
I should add that although the theme feels inferior, probably likely because of unfamilarity, the low impact version used as a challenge bed does work pretty well.
Ooh, it feels pilot-y, doesn’t it? (…mostly in terms of the different rules for the charity money, and the way there was a Brucie forfeit ready to go, win or lose. Fingers crossed for more episodes of series 1 so we can see how things change over time.) Very pleasantly surprised to see that later episodes had more games and less time getting to know the personality of the contestants.
I think criticisms that the challenges from the new version are taken from the German show are entirely fair, but it’s very tempting to wonder to what extent these challenges were also taken from the German show and then contestants were found in the UK to perform them. Even less subtly still, I enjoyed seeing the Wetten, Dass…? logo on the Swiss team’s car, above the British registration plate. (Whisper it, but I don’t think the challenges here were more impressive than the ones in this year’s version, or nearly as impressive as the ones in the Matthew Kelly years.)
For completeness, chess prodigy Matthew Sadler did indeed become a grandmaster, reaching number 16 in the world in 1997.
Actually some more things worth pointing out:
* The yes/no lights for the celebs not *quite* looking great if they selected No.
* I wonder if Brucie filmed all his forfeits up front?
I’m too young to remember this version of the show but enjoyed Matthew Kelly’s run as host in my primary school days. I’d seen one clip of Brucie-era YB before and found it quite jarring.
Over on the other side on Saturday prime time in the 90s, I seem to recall that Noel Edmonds’ Gotchas were originally dubbed “Gotcha Oscars” but presume the BBC either received a cease & desist order or anticipated one so soon dropped the “Oscars” part.
Yep that’s pretty much what happened, but they were Gotcha Oscars until, I think, the second series of NHP once The Academy had had a word, which would have been a few years later than this when he would have started Saturday Roadshow. Not helped by the original Gotcha looking a bit like an Oscar, of course (which these clearly aren’t).