It’s St George’s Day today! And earlier I asked a simple question on Twitter:
So this St George's Day, what's the most English gameshow?
— Brig Bother (@BothersBar) April 23, 2013
And got flooded with loads of answers. Some good, some not so good. The best ones so far are Fluke, Through the Keyhole, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and the one which I came up with which was Pointless (It’s about lists which are a quintessential element of the English school system, it’s hosted by posh people, everyone else in the world finds it baffling).
Can you do better? Remember, we’re talking about ENGLAND here rather than Britain.
Meanwhile, the BBC’s Garry Scott has advised that Gordon Burns will be hosting a live three hour quiz for Radio Lancaster/Manchester on May 16th from 7pm. You can listen and play along live, OR you can be one of the teams playing there for real! There are no prizes as it’s a charity event, but if you can put a team of four together and can get to Blackburn on that date then drop Garry a line.
Curveball suggestion:
Never Mind The Full Stops – that was all about English…!
Ooh. OOOH.
Or indeed the old radio 4 show ‘Many a Slip’…? So English it probably wouldn’t even be considered for being commissioned these days!
Surely The Adventure Game; they had a pause half way through to have tea in the garden! Seriously though that kind of knowing amusement at people struggling with puzzles you have been shown the answer to, is so typically English.
Also the idea of a whole team against the game, rather than each other seems a very English thing.
That’s another great answer.
I’m constantly surprised that apparently ‘televise Dungeons and Dragons without buying the license’ gives ‘Shapeshifting dragons in space set light physics puzzles for celebrity teams of three. And the Vortex.’
From the wireless, . As the host reminds us at least twice an episode, it’s not the points but the taking part that counts. It’s people doing a completely pointless task completely seriously and for the fun of it, and it’s all based on something a slightly sadistic schoolmaster inflicted on a young Ian Messiter.
Yep, another good answer.
Ask The Family, in the Robert Robinson era.
A constant stream of middle class, white, suburban English families taking part.
Mastermind maybe? People answering questions that are very specific under a harsh light..
You know what isn’t very English? Schlag den Raab. You know what is English? Taking statistics about something completely pointless and serving them to the game show community in massive text file form.
I finally finished my behemoth Schlag den Raab marathon, taking down every game, the winner, the score at the time, and other globs of information (want to know how many games Stefan’s won in total? 319) and I’ve decided to let my research be public.
There’s 3 files to this, starting with the main file, which lists the events of each show. Right from the start, it lists the kandidats in the order they’re introduced (and for the last 5 shows, a complete breakdown of their intro VTs), and then the voting order. Then comes a listing of every game and musical act, and the points when we go outside and inside the studio. For each game I note the name in German, a quick google translate, a description of the game, the winner, and the scoreboard after the game (for Blamieren oder Kassieren I also note the scores of the game itself, but we’ll get to that later). At the end of each show, I note how many games Stefan and the kandidat each won in that show.
The second file is the “notable events” file. this is basically a list of what I consider to be events worth commenting on from nearly every show (early on I was stricter with this, so show 8 has nothing). This is from firsts, like the first appearance of various games being plugged, to injuries Stefan has given himself or the set, or games that had unusual things happen. The file then devolves into just a mass of statistics, and a quick german vocab lesson that might come in handy.
The last file is the Blamieren oder Kassieren file. This is just a list of each BoK game that has been played, who won, and the game score. There’s also a note of who won the show, for random statistical analysis just below the results. There’s also a section on time trials, since I was just plain interested in Stefan’s win rate on them. Stefan is known for being very good at Blamieren oder Kassieren, but actually his win rate in good old time trials is much higher, having only lost ONE.
And so here are the links…
Main file: http://www.fifty50show.com/schlag-den-raab.txt
Notable events: http://www.fifty50show.com/sdr-notable-events.txt
Blamieren oder Kassieren: http://www.fifty50show.com/blamieren-oder-kassieren.txt
It’s probably worth pointing out that you can watch all the episodes on http://www.myspass.de.
Crikey, you’ve worked hard on that. Thanks for going to the effort and for sharing it with us.
Which games appear most frequently, other than BoK? (This may well be a difficult question, but I’d count games with the same core activity but different durations together – and would just hope that the same game doesn’t get different names.)
The same game does indeed sometimes get played under different names. In fact, not only that, but different games have been played under the same name! The example I think of to illustrate this is a game called Menschenkenntnis (people skills). The first time a game with this name was played, it was select 5 audience members, and then a form of basically top trumps was played with them. The next time a game went by that name, it was a group of 10 pre-selected audience members (I think) and then various “how many” questions were asked about them, for example “how many have registered with Facebook?”. But THAT game had previously been played under the name Wie Viele? (how many?), so there’s lots to consider when you’re doing a search for Menschenkenntnis.
Where a game has been played essentially the same, with possible differences in duration and so on, I’ve tried to just copy-paste the description both to make my life easier and to keep it consistent. Tischtennis (table tennis) is probably the worst example though, since it’s a very short and simple statement of either “single game” or “best of 3 games” depending on show (and in fact mini-tischtennis has been played once before as just tischtennis, argh!).
To answer the initial question, I would GUESS that the second most-played game is Wer ist Das (15 times), which has been going since show 4 and continues to this day. Stimmt’s has been going since show one, but my gut feeling is that it’s been played fewer times (in fact it’s been played 14 times).
Incidentally, I was asked on twitter if I could find anything that Stefan seemed to be consistently weak at. I came up with mental arithmetic, which has been played as a standalone game (as Kopfrechnen) three times and Stefan has won 0 times. Stefan also seems to struggle when it comes up in quizzes, such as the previous episode’s Wer Lügt.
Great list- I’m actually going over it so see how the games are broken down by type, though some are hard to classify (like Biathalon- is that a more a Physical or a Skill game)?
At least so far, if a show goes the limit,on average you’d see 4 Physical, 5 Mental, 4 Skill, and 2 Mystery games (Going with the Crystal Maze categories was the easiest thing)…Considering they don’t know who the player will be in advance, how they try to balance out possible physical/strength advantage seems to work for the most part…
If we stretch the definition of game show a little, then I’d suggest One Man And His Dog might be up there – Is there anywhere else that would think to televise sheep dog trials?
I was going to suggest that, and I’d expand the pet theme to Pets Win Prizes and That’s My Dog.
Also, Call My Bluff.