Fun fun fun, the BBC are co-prodding with NBC Universal on a new Belgian format Destination X.
In it, groups of people are driven around Europe on a blacked out bus. The bus stops, and given what they can work out from what they see, real clues and fake ones, and doing challenges to earn further clues, they have to mark where they think they are on a map. The person who is furthest away gets eliminated. Presumably it’s a different place each episode and you’ll get to play along at home.
Might actually be good fun – great ratings on VTM in the Flemish region of Belgium, and we love a Flemish format here at The Bar which tend towards more imaginative than most. And there’s De Mol, which is the best show on television.
It does strike me that popular Youtuber GeoWizard, amongst his travelogues and straight-line challenges and his playing of GeoGuessr, basically did this a few years ago, although I’m surprised he only seems to have done it once.
What if someone pukes due to being driven around in a blacked out bus? Immediate disqualification or something more interesting? What have other versions done?
Other geoguessr players have done similar “IRL” challenges. I suppose it was inevitable something like this would happen with the explosion of geoguessr and similar games on youtube, tiktok etc. As a geoguessr player and viewer myself I’m not complaining.
You can watch an episode of BEstemming X with auto generated English subs on the production website https://www.belgianginger.com/bestemming-x
I don’t think there’s been any mention on here yet of Ireland’s Smartest.
Just in case anyone hasn’t seen it, here’s a rundown of the format. (I hope I’m not putting Weaver out of a job here, because I know he wants to write about the show at some point.)
* Each episode starts with three contestants.
* In the first round, they’re each asked GK questions for 120 seconds. Buzz in with the correct answer within two seconds of the host, Claire Byrne, finishing the question and they’ll score two points, otherwise they’ll be given three possible answers with one point for choosing the right one.
* In the second round, they’re each asked questions on a chosen category for 90 seconds, with the same scoring as in the first round. The first contestant has a choice of three categories; after a category is chosen it is replaced with a new one, so the second and third contestants also have three categories to choose from.
* At the end of this round, the contestant with the lowest combined score is eliminated. If two contestants are tied for bottom (as happened in the second episode), the contestant with fewer correct answers across the two rounds is eliminated (who, unfortunately, will be the contestant with more two-point answers).
* The two remaining contestants go through to the Head to Head, which is basically a time trial: who can answer ten GK questions correctly in the faster time?
* The contestant with the higher combined score from the first two rounds has the choice of going first or second. Whoever goes first, their clock counts up from 0:00 and stops when they give their tenth correct answer; the second contestant’s clock then counts down from the first contestant’s time.
* The winner goes through to the semi-finals, a number of high-scoring runners-up will also progress. (Ten episodes in the series, so presumably six winners and three high-scoring runners-up will progress to three semi-finals.)
When I first saw the title, I couldn’t help but think of Britain’s Brightest and Der Klügste Deutsche (both already a decade ago – brrrrrrr). But as one can tell from the format, this show is completely unrelated – it’s devised by Green Inc, of It’s Not the Answer and Hive Minds fame.
The original Irish version of It’s Not the Answer (two decades ago now – double brrrrrrr) was promoted as “TV’s toughest quiz show”, which was fair enough as, truth be told, Ireland has never been a country renowned for its original TV quizzes. (Winning Streak remains its biggest and best-known game show by a long way, even though it’s now been off the air for three years.) Ireland’s Smartest could lay claim to this “toughest quiz” title now, though safe to say it’s still nowhere near as tough as the Krypton Factor.
I won’t say any more because, as I hinted at the start, I don’t want to leave Weaver with nothing to do. But since there didn’t appear to have been any mention of this show on here up to now, I thought I may as well make the first one… 😉
I wonder why there aren’t more Irish quiz shows. Irish TV’s so low budget and quiz shows are cheap and high volume so you’d think it would be the perfect genre for them really.
After six episodes, some more observations:
* Ties for first place going into the Head to Head are also broken by total number of correct answers, the contestant who gave more getting the choice of going first or second.
* And if two contestants are tied on points *and* total correct answers? Then the two-point answers are looked at, and whoever was faster on average with theirs is the beneficiary. (Remember, a two-point answer is given within two seconds of Claire finishing the question.)
* This Sunday’s episode is the first semi-final, so there are indeed three of these – I presume that each will be contested by two heat winners and one high-scoring runner-up. I presume, too, that the final will be a three-contestant affair like all the other episodes, so only the winner of each semi will progress to it.
When it comes to the three high-scoring runners-up, I’m hoping “high-scoring” means the best combined scores from the first two rounds, and not the best Head to Head scores. Of all six runners-up in the heats, three went first in the Head to Head, gave their ten correct answers and then saw their time beaten by the other contestant, while the other three went second and ran out of time before giving their tenth correct answer. One of the three who ran out of time was Brian, who along with that heat’s winner, Patrick, scored 37 points across the first two rounds – none of the other sixteen contestants in the heats scored more than 27. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that it would be a travesty if Brian didn’t make the semis, just because he didn’t get ten in the Head to Head whereas three other runners-up did despite scoring considerably less across the first two rounds than he did.
Well, I was right again – each semi-final was indeed contested by two heat winners and one high-scoring runner-up, with only the winner progressing to tonight’s final.
And “high-scoring” did indeed mean the best combined scores from the first two rounds, so Brian did indeed make the semis and rightly so.
I will say only three things to do with the final at this point, just in case anyone here *is* playing catch-up:
(1) All three contestants in it deserve to be there. (No, I didn’t go to see it recorded – I’ve never been to a recording of a TV show of any kind in my life – but I *have* been following the series to the extent that I’ve made notes of all the scores (and their breakdowns into two- and one-pointers), and of all the Head to Head times where the contestant got to ten correct answers.)
(2) When I see the trophy that they’ll be playing for, I can’t help but think of the Only Connect trophy and the one given to daily winners on Fifteen-to-One 2.0 – even though it’s a metal trophy and those two are not. Must be something to do with the design.
(3) The trophy’s base has “Champion, Series One” on it, so I guess Green Inc are confident that there’ll be more series. Not unreasonable, as It’s Not the Answer ran for four.