Saturday, 7:10pm,
BBC1
They seem very reluctant to call this a gameshow don’t they? Anyway, this “talent” show based on the successful German show Der Klügste Deutsche on the first channel challenges people not only on traditional IQ sort of things but also on other things like emotional intelligence, multitasking, that sort of thing. The challenges look quite clever and interesting so we’ve got high hopes for it. It’s being hosted by The Nation’s Favourite TV Presenter Claire Balding in we think her first non-sports role, and the winner of the series will walk away with £50,000.
Unfortunately we’ve been unable to source an episode of the German show to see how this compares. The official BBC site is here, though.
You can delete this comment immediately, I just wanted to tell you, that it’s Der klügste Deutsche, not Die (although it would be nice if they were that modern and would take the female article)!
Whoops, changed!
It’s weirdly Krypton Factor-esque, but in a high-concept Saturday night format. I quite like it.
I like it. Quite a lot, actually. Can’t help but think that the scoring system feels a bit off somehow, though.
Wait, never mind. The multitasking scoring isn’t the real scoring.
Ooh, the final game is for the finalists to stay in, not to pick a winner. How very Die Slimste!
I’m liking the clock podia even if they don’t quite fit with the rest of the set.
I feel like it’s the sort of thing I should really like but I didn’t quite love it. It had some good ideas in it (I really liked Stop the Clock’s mechanic, although they should have made it a lot clearer that the score obtained is for the round rather than added generally, and the end game is good fun although the time judging was completely awful with the guy giving a right answer clearly with two seconds left on his clock. And why not stick a graphic up with the wrong answers?) but ultimately it feels rather too worthy for proper mainstream success – I think Splash is going to win the match up.
The scoring system felt rather arbitrary, particularly in the opening duels, and I’ve already forgotten how the scoring works for the other games (except twelve for the winner). This literally never happens.
I thought that was bloody good. The feedback seems 70% positive, and whilst Splash! is also trending, it is getting one hell of a slating. Will be interesting to see the ratings in the morning.
I enjoyed it, though I can’t help but feel the first round was unfsir. I really enjoyed the 4 letter words in 27 seconds round. I agree it did have a hint of Krypton Factor about it. Will watch again. had no idea it was on 70 minutes and I managed to stay entertained throughout.
I quite enjoyed that. I knew I wan’t going to watch Splash, so this made a nice thing to watch. I liked all the different games, even though a couple of them were rather iffy (as Lewis made light of on Twitter, Mirror-Hand-Hair Heart is a bit much to get Miranda Hart) and there was iffy time management on that survival round at the end, taking a second or two for the clock to stop and pass play over to the opponent, when I’m sure it’s not impossible for the clocks to be set in such a way that they stop automatically when the graphic of the question on the screen went green. Out of all the rounds played, I thought the multitasking one was the most inventive, having the contestants estimate 27 seconds while making 4-letter words in a 5×5 grid. One contestant forgot all about the time, taking 1:17 to press the button, ending up with a score of -40!
I did notice some recycled graphics and sounds, like the graphics on the screens for the first game looking very Poiltless-like, and whenever a wrong answer was given in any game, the sound effect was the same one as when you gave a wrong answer on The Bank Job’s online game.
This probably isn’t going anywhere, but still: if Channel 4 were doing this, could you imagine that endgame working as an online game in the style of The Bank Job’s? That would have been really quite good.
It looks like the sort of thing that you could see on BBC’s site. Not with online play, but it could be done hot-seat style rather well.
I think it could be the next ‘The Line Up’ or ’21 Questions Wrong’ to be honest. Maybe add a bit more time (2 minutes each, maybe?) to allow for the question and all answers to be read out. Could have another hit on our hands!
I think this kind of show would benefit it being live. That’s where Balding’s experience would let her shine more. Games need a little more pace, but good overall.
Worth pointing out that Bother’s Bar favourite Richard van’t Riet. Has now directed Britain’s Brightest, The Krypton Factor (K-Fac) revival of recent years and Channel 5’s Britain’s Best Brain.
Looks like he has also been brought in to direct The Voice UK this year.
And rather amusingly, also directing Splash for ITV.
Can’t be too many instances of the same director, calling the shots on two different shows for two different broadcasters at the same time.
”The Nation’s Favourite TV Presenter Claire Balding in we think her first non-sports role”
How could you forget Famous and Fearless and she has also done Countryfile and BBC 4 doc’s.
Famous and Fearless was sort of sport, but I grant you Countryfile.
Well, if you must frame a non-talent show game show as a talent show, this is a far better way of doing it than People’s Quiz.
Clare Balding comes across well in this, amusing in the chatty bits, but not so much as to distract from the contest, which she’s good at presenting.
Contestant introductions run a bit long, but padding them around head to head games helps it drag less… But see below.
That observation round was solid due to it’s cruelty.
Counting to 27. The BBC was determined to get this onto Saturday Night prime time, and this is a decent implementation of it. Also shows the potential in multitasking based game shows.
Not sure this format gains from losing a contestant each round rather than doing it as a six player Krypton Factor with head to heads to open.
Grand Slam for a finale, after the winner has been found. Interesting choice, and the round type always works. Not sure about keeping incorrect letters, quite like the giant stop watches for it.
All in all, rather enjoyed that, though the format has a couple of issues for me which prevents me from loving it. But it’s a fairly solid bar for new formats for 2013, and if this is what a typical 2013 new show looks like, I’ll be extremely happy with the year’s output.
Agree with the majority of this post.
Speedy points
– impressed with the range of games and the ingenuity in them. Suspect how much I enjoyed them reflects on how well I would have done on them! Enjoyed the multitasking round and the age guessing particularly, less convinced about the maths round (which I would have done fine on but which I felt wasn’t hugely interesting) and the observation round (partly because I sucked at it, partly because it wasn’t clear what you should be looking for, and partly because iPlayer didn’t give me enough detail to see that there were two colours on the cape instead of one!).
– much too long. Needs 15-20 minutes cutting off it – faster edits in the games would seem to be the way.
– Balding seems a bit uncomfortable but I imagine she’ll warm into it.
– Like the endgame a lot, though I’m unsure of the purpose of the buttons on the giant stopwatches. Support keeping the wrong answers in – adds a memory test, which is pretty much the only thing missing.
– point scoring in the head to heads was pretty confusing. Point scoring overall seemed a little bit off! Best thing I can do is suggest having six (or three) questions in each of the head to heads worth one/two points each, so you’re not keeping track of multiple sets of points and rounds, and then award 10-8-6-4-2-0 in the group rounds. Might be worth starting off with a group round and then doing the head-to-heads? Perhaps I’m asking a bit much.
All in all, pretty solid, if quite a lot smarter than Saturday evening BBC One seems to be used to. And most of the issues can be fixed in the editing booth and the scheduling Batcave.
I liked this a lot, but was frustrated that I didn’t love it. There were parts that were just ever-so-slightly imprecise, or at least just not quite explained properly in advance:
1) The fact that the spelling test was decided by some shonky Playstation Eye detection;
2) Some of the picture puzzles just plain didn’t work – e.g. the missing K;
3) The rapid introduction of the “if there’s more than one person who’s wrong, have another go” in the maths rounds;
4) The scoring systems had the made-up-as-they-went-along feel to them, rather than being told in advance;
5) What was up with the last question in the head-to-head?
Things the show does right:
1) Really liked the multitasking round;
2) This is going to make an amazing console home game if there’s plenty of variety in the games from week to week and if the other games are good;
3) In general I don’t like non-game inserts, but the ones here worked really well in context;
4) More work for Ms. Balding (and, in passing, Mr. Pridmore) always welcome;
5) The observation round was pretty good as observation rounds go;
6) All the contestants were likeable;
7) Liked the endgame, which had very good and varied game material, and having a 2nd-vs.-3rd play-off to make it to the final is at least original.
I can’t imagine it not being a strong contender for the 2013 Top Five, but it feels… rushed, somehow, and that it could have been thought out better. Initial feel points to a potential 8-9/10 show in 7/10 show clothing.
Agreed except for the varied end game material, which was very poor straight-out-of-IQ-book stuff. And saying you’re not going to give the answers (in a hastily added edit) is a sin – did we learn nothing from The People Versus?
I suppose so, but it was just fun to see IQ book material on TV, in a back-to-Mind Games fashion, so that may well be why I was happy to see it on screen in any way, shape or form.
In this day and age, I don’t mind reserving the wrong answers in a timed game for a web site. An alternative would be the Catchphrase-esque run-down of wrong answers after the timed round continued, but that was always a bit too much of a let-down for my taste. I’m happy for there to be some sort of decrease of tension but that was a bit anti-climatic.
Wrong answers in a timed round is a solved problem: stick them up in a caption. Design the graphics and structure the game so this flows, like they do on .
I agree with you far more than I disagree, but just for the purpose of pedantry, that doesn’t work so well for the visually impaired. A dual solution of a caption at the time and a web site that has been optimised to work well in a screen reader would seem to do the trick. In this specific instance, this is a sufficiently visual show that the visually impaired are likely to be struggling in any case.
[the Avanti Un Altro! children special airs on Jan 6th!]
watched some Superbrain Italy, pretty interesting show, but good thing it only lasted two episodes. It was like Wanna Bet without the fun.
One of the contestants was a well-known face by Italian gameshow fans: Valentina Locchi, blind since birth but with exceptional hearing skills, appeared on Enrico Papi’s Name That Tune in 2002 winning 73 episodes and taking home €320,000 before retiring because she just wanted to go on with her life.
http://static.blogo.it/tvblog/4/4cb/superbrain-6.jpg
her task last night? guessing 20 songs (from a pool of 365) by listening only 1 second of each.
of course she did it 🙂
4.9m for this last night, which is a bit higher than I anticipated. Decent figure.
Audience started off around 3.5m, but grew and peaked with 5.9m. I think that, without the football, it will grow to over 5m next week.
Wow this show is not Der klügste Deutsche at all! I’ve just watched it with a proxy on the iplayer and it’s totally different. In Germany bits of the casting tour are shown and by that the contestants are introduced (one at a time, not two). The casting is done by a jury of three celebrities who are known for making more “clever” television (Judith Rakers- news presenter, Matthias Opdenhövel – seems great, Frank Plasberg – political debate show host; there used to be Eckart von Hirschhausen instead of Plasberg, a comedian who makes joke about medical things and is very smart). Then the person has to face a quickfire quiz. Afterwards they will have to play a game in the style of the games they played in the UK version as a duell, but with other rules like “Guess the age, if you’re less than 3 years away from the actual age, you gain a point.” so that they have an amount of points they can compare to the other constestants. When all the contestants are introduced and have played their games, the points of the rounds are compared with each other and the contestants get overall-points. Just like in the British version. Then they play a couple of games against each other with the best person scoring 4 points, second best 3 and so on, there are always 4 contestants playing at once. In the end the person with the most points is definitely in the final, the second person is chosen by the jury (or the producers…..). The other two are out of the show. Then the whole thing is done again so that 4 people are qualified for the final of the series.
There are two semi-finals with this concept and one finale with slightly changed rules. In the finale the whole thing is done as it was done in the semi-finals. But as there are 4 people left these people play duels against each other (first vs. fourth and third vs. second). The winners of this were then up for a vote to see who is “Der klügste Deutsche”. And yes this voting is unnecessary and ridiculous and everything before was nearly a waste of time. Still I really liked this show’s last series. The first one had a different format (which I was more like the British comcept but with K.O.-rounds instead of this overall-scoring system if I remeber it correctly) and wasn’t equally good. And the German studio is beautiful and really bright and violett and a bit like an arena with the contestants standing on a bright circle in the middle of the audience. Next to this circle and connected to it is the jury’s table, which can move around the circle as TV Total’s table can. All in all a great show with good ratings in germany, but I felt they had to improve things on the British version. (e.g. Mirror-Hand-Hair Heart is my favourite female comedian?! I would have said I had never heard of her…)
Having seen some of the German original, I have to agree. The set over there is very good, and the games seemed a little better too. Did Das Erste show it live or pre-recorded?
I think it was pre-recorded, but the finale could have been shown live. I’m not sure, but the semi-finals definitely were pre-recorded.
Here is a game from Der klügste Deutsche. The aim is to put the right people in the right seats based on the clues given.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r17uDgXmZ68
(Sorry I don’t know how to embed videos)
BRIG EDIT: Just stick the link in a seperate line I think usually, ta.
Just watching the video now, and if you want to try for yourself, I’ve translated the clues.
Man in yellow top – sits between two women
Old man – has the highest place number
Woman in black dress – sits right in the middle
Woman in red dress – sits next to the gentleman in the bright green jacket
Woman in blue dress – has only one seat neighbour
I blame Google Translate for the old man’s clue translation, I thought it meant he had the highest place number, meaning he’d be sat in seat 5, but he was put in seat 4. Maybe I missed something…
The old man sits on the seat with the highest even number, thats the problem in the translation 🙂
not sure about the second v third playoff – the guy who came third and then won that final head to head could now get to the final presumably by winning week 5. He will then have had more experience of the studio, the cameras, the lights and more importantly the games, so surely that makes him a good contender for winning the whole thing, and yet he only came 3rd of 6 in his heat. So basically, whichever of all the losers, wins week 5, must have a good chance of winning the whole thing.
I’ve been sent a copy of the original Klugste Deutsche. The original German version is more like The People’s Quiz than The Krypton Factor – casting round in front of three judges who do a general knowledge quiz and everything. Matthias from Schlag den Raab is one of the judges.
Any chance of uploading. I’ve only seen a few bits and pieces. I’d love to see the original.
It’s about three hours long but I will try and do it when I’m a bit less busy. It feels rather better structured that our version and has more exciting graphics and acts. Having the jury decide between the second and third place to decide who goes through is a bit odd though, think the UK idea of having them duel it out is better.
It would be much appreciated (of course when you have the time). The graphics, set and games are much better than ours. The jury are pretty good, and I feel like that’s the only thing that is missing from Britain’s Brightest.
I agree about the decision/duel between 2nd and 3rd. I’d hope that the Germans might take our end game back to their original version.
I’m not sure the jury are that necessary (although their moving desk is amazing) – it feels like they’re there because that’s what talent shows have rather than any properly useful purpose other than saving someone at the end (there’s no reason Kai Pflaume couldn’t read out quickfire questions and they barely feature in most of the rest of it). Possibly some decently intelligent celebrities to contextualise what’s happening for the audience *may* work.
Some games were repeated from last week, some weren’t; some repeated with a little variety, probably enough to keep things going. Glad to see the multi-tasking game again, even slightly better balanced; could live without the repeat of the spelling task. The mathematical observation test was great fun, though I would have been – I think – joint last on it. Many of the problems with last week’s show were again problems with this week’s show; the slightly dodgy question material last week remained slightly dodgy in the same places. The performances in general seemed a little bit down on last week. The contestants were again generally likeable and happily the most likeable ones IMHO happened to do best this time around. The atmosphere is fine; people seemed to be having a lot of fun, and that’s good enough for me. Looking forward to finding out what the final two episodes are like which will determine whether this show really is a six, a seven or something else.
Oh god I think the Rebuses this week were somehow worse than last week.
Having watched it, I think nothing so far has beaten Mirror-hand-hair Heart in terms of awfulness. Not sure who Jessica Tennis is though.
Also I note the audience actually GROANED (or at least mumbled unappreciatively) when the example of Chairlock Homes was given. I don’t think that’s the reaction they were going for.
*googles*
…Oh. I actually thought she had a middle name that sounded vaguely like Car+T.
Having watched the games of episode 1 in bite-sized chunks, and episode 2 live, I agree with comments above. Some additional notes:
* Accept a draw as a valid result, purlease.
* Ooh, they’ve borrowed the Connections round from The OC.
* Shame they’ve not borrowed The OC’s attitude to precision question-writing.
* Names from symbols continues to be a problem: apparently “king-spew-car-tennis” is a rebus for that well-known heptathlete Jessie Cart Ennis.
* Scoring in the group rounds is unreasonably confusing.
* There’s no need to eliminate people one by one, they just choose to.
Mmm. Pretty much agree with this assessment.
If timing means we have to keep Counting Boggle as a four player only game, we have to stick with that as the game that finds a winner, and who will compete for second and third, we have to keep the head to heads, and we have to keep Puzzle Grand Slam to find a runner up, I’d change the internal show structure to be the following:
3x Head to Heads – 1 point each round of them for a tie, 2 points each round of them for a win. THis has the added benefit of distinguishing between contestants better when you put that all into a big score board. (Might make it 2 4 6, since they seem to try and make the final round of them more difficult than the second round and the second round more difficult than the first, not sure if 12 points available from the head to heads would be a good thing or not, and 1 and 3 available would be awkward if you allowed sharing points on a tie)
2x 6 way matches, with a 12 8 5 3 2 1 scoring structure (Was going to suggest 12 8 6 4 2 0 but I think that flows better)
Lose bottom two contestants at this point.
Counting boggle. Either with 12 8 5 3 scoring, or open ended scoring (so your letter boggle score is your score for games, like the KF general knowledge round, but with large negative scores more likely than large positive scores)
Lose bottom contestant here, top contestant qualifies for final.
Puzzle Grand Slam, winner gets through to the playoffs for the final place in the final.
…If it were entirely up to me, however, I’d remove the head to heads, anything currently played as such that can’t be played in six player form (and they illustrated that they’re happy to play stuff on the buzzers in multiplayer player form or as a head to head), lose it, you can probably find other ways of testing the same things; 12 8 6 4 2 0 scoring, ties divided by splitting the difference (so, tie for first place give both players 10 and the next contestant 6; tie for second and give first 12, both contestants 7, and the next 4. Three way tie for first and all three get 8 [Reducing the 12 to 10 making the sum of a three way tie for first equal to the sum of normal first second and third might be worth the loss of giving first a bonus two, so 10 8 6 4 2 0 would be a reasonable alternative to 12 8 6 4 2 0]
Last two rounds play out as they do here after eliminating two contestants to go into Counting Boggle, but with one of 12 8 4 0/12 8 6 4/10 7 4 1/10 8 6 4 depending on what the normal amount for 1st place is and what works best in practice. That should give… Five games before losing anyone, while allowing us to not spend half the show watching six contestants distribute 6 between each pair when each game following will have 12 points go to the winner.
,,,I think Jessie Cart Ennis was meant to be from Chess Sick Car Tennis. Making it not actually as bad as Chairlock Holmes since some pronunciations of chess probably equate to Jess. But making the King so prominent in an image representing chess was an odd decision.
The most puzzling thing I found with this week’s show was that they decided to just change the rules to timer boggle, giving one extra point per word and a ten point bonus for hitting the timer smack on. This presents two gaping holes in the game:
1) What the first lady tried to do. That ten point bonus is so huge, you may as well not bother with the words.
2) If you’re particularly good with words, it probably possible to actually get one every 3 seconds or less, allowing perpetual scoring. That said, it did take forever for the system to register a word, probably to prevent this.
Any chance of Klugste Deutsche? After how Britain’s Brightest performed last night, I’m even more curious how much they’ve changed it.
BTW, ratings for last night;
Britain’s Brightest – 4.08m (18.1%)
Splash – 5.16m (22.4)
In It to Win It – 4.96m (21%)
Looking at the breakdown it seems like Secret Service (Richard Hammond’s new vehicle) didn’t help Brightest. 2.13m (10.8%) was SS’s ratings. Poor lead in which affected it. Splash down, but probably didn’t drop as much after all the publicity this week. I expect it to drop further next week. BBC1 need a new Saturday night schedule. Brightest is good, but the lead-in is dragging it down. Pointless Celebrities repeats anyone?
It’s uploading now.
Right here it is:
Gone, sorry.
It’s over 1.5Gb and that’s after some basic re-encoding to get the filesize down. It will disappear in a few days – if you want it then grab it, but if you miss it then tough luck you’ll just have to wait for the feature.
Big file, but thanks very much. Video works a dream. Watching right now!
It’s almost three hours long – it looks like they get it all done in a week: Saturday night, Thursday Night and the live final the following Saturday.
I’ve watched about half so far (fast forwarding through some bits). It’s a hell of a lot better than our version. Games are good, points system easy to understand and the show seems to flow a lot better. With the exception of the end game(ivolving the giant stopwatches), the BBC and RDF have mucked this right up!
*involving
Best episode so far, with no dodgy rebuses and instead a sequential “work out what the puzzle is” puzzle challenge that is somewhere between the “escape the room” games and those murder Mystery challenges on The Crystal Maze. If I were getting excited then I’d say “spin that round off into its own show, DJB to set the puzzles”, but the real question that arises is how is that English-language version of TORE! or EXIT! or whatever it was called getting along… and are they getting DJB to set the puzzles?
This is 2013’s The Exit List, and not just because it’s arisen at the very start of the calendar year; loads of problems, but it tries to do something big and interesting, and its heart is clearly in the right place despite all the considerable not-properly-thought-through faults.
The room puzzle was absolutely excellent, very much like those room escape games on the internet, and quite honestly I want there to be an American version that would let me on just so I can try that.
…If anybody could point me in the direction of any real life places that do those, I’d give them thousands of internets.
Try San Francisco. The first few were criticised for not living up to the high-concept billing, but I get the impression that they still do a lot of things right.
No charge!
There’s also http://www.5-wits.com/
If you don’t think you’ll make it to the States, here’s a slightly spoilery taster of what happens at the end: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIyqTP3aDXM
Not quite the same, but No-Longer-Called-Spymasters in Bar Hill (near Cambridge) describes itself as a combination of Mission Impossible and The Crystal Maze. It’s been a few years since I was last there, but I’d concur:
http://spymissions.co.uk/home.html
Hunh! How interesting. I’d never heard of that before and I rather geek out over That Sort Of Thing. It sounds likely to be nearly great in that The British Don’t Do Customer Service Or Phun way, and if you’re in a party of people who are prepared to not be too critical and to properly get into it, potentially Very Silly Fun Indeed. How long has it – have they – existed? Sounds like a potential venue for a Bar meetup (excluding Brig, obv., because he does not actually exist beyond a voice on a podcast).
We almost went there for a friend’s stag do a few years ago, although we didn’t go in the end. Which I was actually a little disappointed about.
Agree with the positive stuff about the locked room, although a slight shame the puzzles weren’t a bit more natural i.e. not just plonked up on a screen.
If I see Kinect Spelling again I might kill.
I think the fact it takes over forty minutes to get past the head to heads really hurts.
I wonder if there’s an alternative universe where the games were planned to all be at least that interesting, but couldn’t be made to work in that time so Kinect Spelling, Dodgy Rebuses and That Intuition Game Off Of Push The Button were drafted in as last-minute replacements?
Besides, I know that Liane who won the locked box game. She’s lovely. Hurrah!
Forgot about the existence of this discussion, oops.
Scoring is 12 7 4 2 1 0 for six player, and then drops the lowest none zero as we go on, I think (I know 12 7 is right throughout, I know lowest is always 0, I can’t be certain if 5 player is 4 2 0 for the last three places because the show I derived this from was a three way tie who all got 2 points)
So, actually quite simple but not adequately explained in the show itself.