I’ve basically fallen in love with Italian show Avanti un Altro! (which you can watch ungeoblocked here). I am hoping to find a way to capture the video stream so I can do a proper feature on it at the weekend. The format on paper is nothing much – person at front of queue tries to answer three questions out of four in a set, iof they succeed they pick a tube with (usually) an amount of money in. They must decide to stay on and increase their total or retire from the seat and become King of the Hill, knowing that if they get the next set of questions wrong they’re immediately out the door. Keep going until the end of the show where the person currently in the champions seat gets the opportunity to win all the money they accumulated + €100,000.
It’s basically simple and brilliant and it’s helped no end by a brilliant host and a range of characters who turn up, do some sort of comic skit and then ask special questions for extra bonuses.
Here is the end game. It’s from the Spanish primetime version which is a bit less wacky than the Italian show but adds some interesting and fun elements of its own (such as physical challenges). Basically the contestant has to get 21 questions wrong – the incorrect answer is the correct answer – if they can do that within 2:30 they win all the money they accumulated plus €100,000. If the time runs out, they lose the accumulated money but they can still win up to €100k which starts counting down. The trouble is, if they give a bad response to a question they’ve got to start the entire list all over again at light speed. It’s fun.
(I would have preferred to show from the Italian show, but Mediaset are notoriously quick to get rid of stuff on Youtube so it’s difficult to find a good example)
The “from the top” list quiz has been an Italian staple for years and years – I remember it from Luna Park. It’s especially fun the faster the host goes. This season they’ve introduced an added element in the Italian show, if the money drops down to €50,000 the contestant can opt to freeze the clock on the understanding that that will be the last go and you’ll leave with nothing if you don’t complete the list on that attempt. This getsd round the rather obvious flaw that once you get down to €30k or so and fail you aren’t going to get through the list fast enough to complete.
Someforeign shows you can watch and immediately see how you could translate it to British screens. This is one of them.
That’s a properly tense endgame, even when you can’t understand the questions.
Nice. So if I understand correctly, each question is of the form “X or Y – which has property Z?”)
Is the contestant allowed to pre-empt the “X or Y” bit and just rattle off all the incorrect answers, do we know? Obviously this is hard to do until you’ve heard the question multiple times.
Yep.
The player can just blurt answers out, they certainly don’t have to wait for the host to finish the question- he’ll just move straight on (really you have to see the Italian show to see this is action, Paulo Boniolis in full flow is *absolutely astonishing* – go and watch Wednesday’s episode in the link provided if you can).
Another difference between the Italian and Spanish show is that in the Italian show, except for a few times at the beginnng or after a lengthy run the host won’t stop the clock, a buzzer will go and he’ll just go straight back to the beginning, so the game takes about half the time.
If it appears over these shores (and it bloody should), you can probably guess it’d be called Next!
Who would host it though? Who could play up the comedy and rattle the questions in the final off at a decent rate?
Already discussed here.
My next so-obvious-it’s-surprising everything-old-is-new-again suggestion is Sir Terry Wogan. He has shown on the endgame of Wogan’s Perfect Recall that he can do fast, and he can do big-money. (In theory.) My thinking is that he’s seen what a big Saturday night show has done to revive Brucie’s career – or, at least, to go out with a bang – and he’s ten years younger. He’s also as light entertainment as you’d like and could loon around with the shenanigans.
Now admittedly I say all this before having actually seen the show, but thanks to the ungeoblocked link…
Why can I see Tim Vine hosting this?
The only flaw in this is that the accumulated money is rarely likely to be won. I’d lose to 100k when ‘regular time’ expires and let the accumulated money clock. This gives further incentive to go for the big bucks during the first round.
I’d be tempted to use mini-sets of multiple choice questions where the three answer options stay the same throughout the set to help speed it up a bit, and maybe make it 2 out of 3 to stay on. Also I think they could do with having the waiting queue of people in silhouette.
Definitely agree with money clock counting down rather than setting to 100k.
In Italy, a few person did the last round between the first 150 seconds, winning a lot of money. It’s difficult, but it’s possible
I know you’ve probably not been into BBUS this year, but you may want to find the ep from yesterday (Sept. 13th)- probably one of the all-time best live shows ever.
There has been some epic game play this year. All I’ll say about last night’s show (to avoid spoilers) is WHAT A FACE!
Jacques Antoine – Fort Boyard creator – has died:
http://tvmag.lefigaro.fr/programme-tv/article/information/71622/jacques-antoine-le-createur-de-fort-boyard-est-mort.html (in French)
Ah, that’s very sad. In a roundabout way, I owe my TV career to him. RIP.
RIP
Jacques Antione. You go down in History
on today’s Avanti Un Altro the “Iettatore” (Jinx) scroll was drawn.
it summons this guy here
http://www.tutto-tv.it/public/Tutto-TV-Lo-Iettatore-Avanti-un-Altro-2012.jpg
who takes away all the contestant’s money and takes away the contestant too… unless the contestant can answer to his question.
so, here are the bonuses characters grant in this season for clearing their challenge:
Bonus/Bonas = double scroll value
all others, including Luca Laurenti = may redraw the scroll
I watched it earlier this evening. Cannot believe they were getting though the contestants at a quick pace. You could tell the champion were struggling in the final with Paolo stopping the clock early on.
What’s all the business with the two blokes and the woman they introduce at the start? Does it really take 3 people to adjudicate questions that have only two possible answers, both of which have been checked in advance?
It’s just the Italians being Italian I think. And funnily enough, a contestant got a wrong answer overturned the other night.
It’s like Affari Tuoi. You got the adjudicator who has been on the show for years but you got this guy who wears a bow tie and talks like someone from The Fast Show’s Channel Nine. I don’t know who the heck he is.
I think the Italians just like characters, and if there’s an excuse to have someone to bounce off for comedy they’ll take it. Affari Tuoi used to have all sorts of regulars in the front row of the audience for seemingly no other reason than for the host to chat to them.
31 Questions: an Italian heart in an Australian body.