OK this is something to file under “quite interesting, but…”. As you may have gathered, Wetten Dass…? had a highly successful 40th anniversary special hosted by Thomas Gottschalk the other week on German, Austrian and Swiss telly, so successful it sounds like they’re considering a reboot.
But what of the very first episode from 1981, hosted by Franck Elstner? It is… it feels very much like a bit of a work in progress. It’s about an hour before any of the challenges actually happen, the first hour seemingly introducing the people who will be betting on the outcomes, which seem like a mixture of celebs and civilians. Each contestant sits out one bet to play something from The Golden Shot for some reason. The seventh contestant is 1000 viewers playing along live on the phone. The “wettkoenig” is the contestant who guesses the most bets correctly (who wins 6,000DM by the sounds), although all the challenges succeed anyway (the best one is a man who claims he can blow up a hot water bottle with his breath).
When Gottschalk took over the episodic game aspect was dropped of course with each of the guest celebs having a chat then betting on the success of a challenge on pain of a charity forfeit, the evening’s “wettkoenig” being decided by telephone vote on who had the most impressive challenge.