Saturday 22nd September, 7:15pm UK/8:15pm local
Pro 7 and naughty internet streaming
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Schlag den Henssler is back, and a plucky contestant will be attempting to win a €250,000 by besting celebrity chef Stefan Henssler over 15 mystery events.
This commentary is going to be a bit different, as three quarters of the usual presenting team will be running around London solving puzzles. However! Scott Rux has offered to step into the breach and provide a commentary of his own. What’s gonna happen?
Watching the live Pro 7 stream might be a bit more difficult than it has been previously.
Please refer to Scott’s Twitter for the commentary feed.
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.The Opera VPN has apparently stopped being useful for SdH. Bother’s Bar recommends shelling out for a proper VPN service. Bother’s Bar uses Tunnelbear, other VPN services are available. Matt Clemson recommends Windscribe as a free alternative. We cannot take responsibility for anything you do to your system, so be careful and use some common sense.
To watch it would be useful to sign up for ProSieben’s catch-up service – it’s pretty simple to work out, don’t click the box if you don’t want e-mail messages. You will need to put in a proper e-mail because it will send you a confirmation.
If anyone knows of any relatively safe livestreams, do feel free to share.
Meanwhile German Game of Games starts tonight (Friday) on Sat 1.
Game of Games began last week – tonight’s was the second episode!
I should post more.. to say I actually quite enjoyed this adaptation – its pretty much the same idea and keeps much of the same fun and feeling of the original.
Yes! Fair enough, I was about to watch German Boyard and discovered it was about to start 20 minutes later and didn’t see an obvious link to ep1.
Would agree it’s a good adaptation. The format is basically the same, except there are five games, five winners reduced to four to play Know or Go with two rounds of Blindfold Musical Chairs. It also looks like Know Or Go becomes sudden death penalty shootout when it gets down to two people, rather than single mistake knocks you out.
I saw this casting call for a new show, Small Fortune, on Twitter and haven’t heard anything else about it. https://youngest.myauditionstage.com/#/guest/item/20
Does anyone have any more information on it?
Discord Stream is live. Check the hashtag for more information!
This was great fun thanks Scott, might see about sorting out similar for next time.
Henssler won last night. And Elton jumped in the pool. It felt more entertaining than the last couple of episodes, but it also felt like a show trying to save itself from the chop. The viewers responded in kind.
Total Viewers
ZDF – München Mord (Drama) – 5.78m (19.6%)
ARD – Hirschhausens Quiz des Menschens (Hirschhausen’s People Quiz) – 4.13m (14.9%)
RTL – Das Supertalent (Germany’s Got Talent) – 4.03m (14.2%)
Sat.1 – Harry Potter & Prisoner of Askaban – 1.76m (6.2%)
Pro7 – Schlag den Henssler – 1.10m (5.0%)
Not the lowest total audience, but the lowest total share ever.
14-49 Viewers
RTL – Das Supertalent (Germany’s Got Talent) – 1.78m (20.0%)
Sat.1 – Harry Potter & Prisoner of Askaban – 1.13m (12.8%)
ZDF – München Mord (Drama) – 0.93m (10.2%)
ARD – Hirschhausens Quiz des Menschens (Hirschhausen’s People Quiz) – 0.83m (9.5%)
Pro7 – Schlag den Henssler – 0.57m (7.9%)
Lowest in both audience & share. That might swing Pro7’s minds, the first time the format has gone below 10%.
The next episode is sometime in December and, judging by the audiences, I think it might be the last.
But up against Got Talent, a quiz, a film and a drama, that’s quite a battle. It’s not like you’re lacking entertainment elsewhere.
The fact it’s as low as 0.57m and 7.9% will hurt. Most primetime shows doing that kind of number don’t survive. They(‘ve) see(n) it as bulletproof, something that can take on any competition, but not anymore.
For example let’s take Schlag den Star on 16th Oct 2016.
RTL – Das Supertalent – 2.06m (21.5%)
Pro7 – Schlag den Star – 1.43m (16.7%)
ZDF – Stralzund: Schutzlos (Drama) – 1.01m (10.3%)
ARD – Klein gegen Groß (Big vs Small) – 0.88m (9.3%)
Or Schlag den Raab on 24th Oct 2015
RTL – Das Supertalent – 2.00m (20.5%)
Pro7 – Schlag den Raab – 1.67m (20.6%)
ARD – Verstehen sie Spaß? (Candid Camera) – 0.95m (9.7%)
Sat.1 – Harry Potter & Prisoner of Azkaban – 0.88m (9.0%)
ZDF – Schwarzach 23 (Drama) – 0.85m (8.7%)
The target audience aren’t buying Henssler in the role and his lacklustre performances aren’t helping. Other factors are also forcing it down. Here’s a good article on it’s decline (you’ll need Google Translate) – http://www.quotenmeter.de/n/103946/geschlagen-und-gescheitert-hat-schlag-den-henssler-noch-eine-zukunft
The translations of The Great Escape are out in a somewhat complicated fashion:
* The subbing team from Reddit who got on it early on released their subs of the first episode – that’s independent of the TvN Asia subs. I can’t find a formal release post so I don’t know for certain if it’s a complete set of subs or just ‘everything they’d done’.
* TvN Asia’s subs are also out, and have been ripped as softsubs – but as I write, only the first episode’s been ripped, and I gather they ran a double-bill last night.
So: The first episode is out in two forms, the second one *should* be imminent but isn’t currently. I don’t know if the established subs team (“The Great Subs”) will be sticking with it given TvN Asia’s involvement, it’s quite hard to actually find where they’re discussing things!
This reddit post covers at least everything going on with the first episode: https://www.reddit.com/r/koreanvariety/comments/9i7277/the_great_escape_%EB%8C%80%ED%83%88%EC%B6%9C_e01_180701_fansubs_tvn_asia/
they have confirmed they will continue despite the tvn subs.
So I watched the first episode and… it started slowly, I’d say, being polite. There’s a team of six exploring what looks like it might be an entire escape warehouse with dozens of elaborate rooms and at least one interesting transition between them. However, in terms of interesting puzzles and interesting content, it’s not off to a good start. It’s off to an easy-to-follow start, but already way behind Geek and Sundry Escape! and Race to Escape. It makes me wish that they had used the potentially superb set for the final of the Red Bull Mind Gamers, letting the finalist teams absolutely rip through the rooms as if they were on Fun House or Finders Keepers. Maybe it’ll get more interesting, but it’ll need to do so quickly to keep me on board.
The tvN subs for the second episode (or rather, the second half of the first escape, I guess?) are now available from Subscene. It does pick up the puzzley content, although it sometimes feels a bit like they make a beeline to the puzzles and we don’t get a moment to be immersed in the environment – we only really got *that* from the very first room… and that was quite a dull one!
I’m a little bothered by the linearity; while there are incidents of returning to the earlier rooms, it does feel very much like there’s only one puzzle available at any given time to work on, which does make things feel a bit mechanical; indeed, one sequence that springs to mind (preparing some lunch – not actually formally a puzzle!) was rather more appealing because there were some organic problems that arose from it.
Given what we’ve observed some of the other Korean series we’ve seen, I do wonder if it’ll adapt as the series goes on as they figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Watched the first double episode, will write something tomorrow. As someone who really enjoys a show where the location is a character I quite dug it even if it felt like rather a slow start and as such I’m intrigued to see what happens next. I quite like the contestants, I would suspect the interplay is likely to be the greater focus than the puzzles but we’ll see.
I watched a second double episode today, and the fact that it took me about three quarters of a year to getting round to doing so is fairly telling. Great sets, not desperately original puzzles, fairly nice twist at the end, massively overblown reactions from the contestants, being a Korean variety show. Not a patch on Race To Escape (or even Geek and Sundry Escape) in terms of people, you know, actually playing a game.
Still from the first series? I’ve seen the first episode from the second series now, and it seems a bit more robust. And I’m astounded by the level of production values put into it.
Break: Henssler Quits
https://twitter.com/ProSieben/status/1044617394105323525
By the sounds of things, the planned December episode won’t go ahead either
Well… gosh. There’s still another episode scheduled for this year, right?
I was randomly wondering if it’d be effective to have some form of Schlag Den Star tournament to decide the Raab for the following year; that way the house champion inherently gains some perception of being a winner; might rectify one of the flaws with Henssler’s involvement that we were talking about on Saturday
GIVE US SCHLAG DEN ELTON.
It’s his decision to go, and apparently he made it after this weekend’s show. That was his last show. Therefor, there won’t be a show in December
In a statement he said;
“It was clear from the start that taking over this programme wouldn’t be a walk in the park. I’ve given everything, but let’s not beat around the bush – the viewers don’t want to see me in this role and I accept that. And for that reason, I’ve decided it’s time to shake myself down and move on to the next adventure. I’d like to thank everyone involved at Prosieben and Brainpool for the great times and the confidence shown in me”
Prosieben boss Daniel Rosemann said;
“Television means constant change – for talent, channels and shows. We respect Steffen Henssler’s wish to move on and wholeheartedly thank him for the good time spent together”.
https://www.presseportal.de/pm/25171/4071602
Jumping before he was pushed basically. December would have been the seventh one this year, is that correct? And they were only contracted for six, so would have involved a contract extension, I’m gathering.
I think he would’ve been pushed, the ratings were on a downward slope. He’s had the balls to admit it though – the viewers don’t like him in the ‘Raab’ role. Respect where it’s due.
December would’ve been the sixth show this year (March, May, June, August and September), which is the normal rhythm for the show. There wouldn’t be any necessary contract extension. I imagine some kind of get out clause has been used (by whom no one knows), but that would be purely speculating.
What’s more bitter is that after Time Battle was cancelled, it’s the second Saturday night show to be cancelled by Prosieben in a month.
ProSieben has had some issues lately, eh? First they had to pull Time Battle after one ep (breaking their “all original programming on Saturday nights” promise), now this…
I’m wondering if it could work if they changed it up a bit- instead of one v one, have it be a team vs team concept-one civilian team and one “house team” of 4 players each. Each member of the “house team” would be a specialist in a certain type of game (so someone would be good at quizzes, someone would be good at physical games, someone would be good at skill games, etc.) Each team is headed by a captain who decides who plays each game with certain limits- such as the same person can’t play two games in a row, and in the first 11 games each person must play at least twice. Most of the time the games are revealed and explained before the captain decides who plays, but once or twice they have to decide who plays with only a clue to what the game is before it’s explained:
For example, they’re given the clue of “Dominoes”:
-It could be a regular game of dominoes
-It could be a domino setup and knockdown race
-It could be just a description for a type of quiz (One where the answer of one question is a key word of the next one- a “Domino Effect”)
The Australian version of Beat the Star was a celeb vs a family of 4 or 5. It got canned after 4 episodes, but it wasn’t solely down to the format.
‘Schlag den …’ is such an iconic show for them, that it’s not really something that can be changed. The one-on-one format has an intensity, that’s proving to only be reliant on “Raab vs a contestant”.
Your idea sounds like a format of its own. Not a bad format at that. But it needs a unique hook (e.g. the scoring system from ‘Schlag den …’.)
Brig’s tweet does make me wonder what they’re gonna do with the money- I’d assume they just keep it (since it was production money and not partially raised by phone entries like the early seasons of WWTBAM UK- that I remember specifically said if the show was canned any money left in the phone account would go to charity)- if he hadn’t quit and they knew the December show would be the last one, I’d think they would have made it 750K and did what they did the last ep of the original series- a different player in the audience would play each game, if they won they got 50K, if they lost the money would go into a jackpot for the winning players to play for in a game 16 (IIRC, when SdR did it someone ended up winning a million through 9 losses, but there was 1.5 million on the line there- 100K per)
Six live Schlag den Stars next year apparently.
And an episode on 8th December.
Not surprising at all. Too strong a format to let go of. First is on the 8th of December, then six new episodes next year. One thing people are criticising Pro7 for is the placement of ad breaks in their shows (not exclusive to ‘Schlag den …’). Will be interesting to see if they change it
The production company must be happy though- they’re still doing shows, and they are saving over a million Euros in the budget (since they know they’re going to give away 700K with SdS over the December show and 2019. If SdH had continued, they had a possible 2M at stake- 500K going into the December show, plus 1.5 million over the 6 2019 shows)