So this has piqued my interest this afternoon, there’s a show on France 2 right now called Face à la bande (Face the Band) where people send in their questions and a group of celebrities get four minutes to try and work out the logical answer and if they don’t the viewer gets €300 and there’s a hidden picture element and CHRIST ISN’T THIS BASICALLY CELEBRITY WHAT? WHERE? WHEN?/MILLION DOLLAR MIND GAME not doing especially well on early evening France 2?
Someone with a much better grasp of French will need to tell me how the questions stack up to the original Russian/US game. The credits suggest it’s an original creation (partly by the host himself in fact).
Interesting little thing- on the Swiss version of Pointless, the endgame is a little different- they only get two answers, but if one of them gets down to 10 they stop and offer the team 2000 Swiss Francs to quit or they can go on to try for 10,000 Francs if it’s Pointless….and if they get a Pointless answer in the first two rounds (they do three teams), they get a cash bonus on the spot..
here’s some eps (not geo-blocked, at least not in the US)
http://www.srf.ch/sendungen/weniger-ist-mehr/sendungen
Didn’t they used to have that endgame where you got two answers to take the bar down to zero and you started your second answer where the first one left off?
The German version had a similar thing, a Pointless answer was a guarantees €1000 come what may.
“Face à la bande” is clearly inspired by Genial Daneben (Genially Wrong), a German panel game, minus the photos of the call-in/send-in question setters (aired for 9 seasons, on a hiatus since 2011).
Interesting!
http://youtu.be/CHZdid9QElA
Title is ‘Face the Gang’ rather than ‘band’.
A few of the questions translated:
What have Parisian women had the legal right to do since the end of January 2013?
Why has the name of the mayor of Dijon, elected in 1945, made it into common parlance?
Why can certain foreign tourists no longer leave South Korea?
So they’re on the slightly quirky edge of the quiz sword.
Staying in France, M6 have announced they’re putting out Rising Star on a Monday night, the channel’s usual ratings high point of the week (clearly not confident enough it’d do well scheduled elsewhere).
Interestingly, a week before it launches, they’re doing a full-on 10 minute live ‘test’ to show people how to use the app.
In fact all questions are in the anecdotal and the unusual. And this week, Patrice Laffont is one member of the gang !
Some or all of these might already be out there…
BBC One
Pointless (R) 3.20 (25.0%)
A Question of Sport 2.48 (13.1%)
Perfection (R) 0.90 (13.2%)
BBC Two
GBBO: An Extra Slice 2.52 (12.1%)
Mastermind 1.76 (8.8%)
Two Tribes 1.20 (7.6%)
Eggheads 0.99 (6.0%)
ITV
Tipping Point 2.09 (23.5%)
Gift Wrapped 1.52 (12.5%)
Judge Rinder 0.91 (13.3%)
The Chase (R) 0.65 (9.7%)
Channel 4
The Million Pound Drop 0.98 (4.8%)
Come Dine With Me (R) 0.69 (5.6%)
Deal or No Deal 0.55 (6.9%)
Countdown 0.45 (6.5%)
Win It, Cook It 0.24 (2.6%)
Channel 5
Celebrity Big Brother: Live Eviction 1.87 (9.6%)
CBBBOTS 0.88 (6.9%)
Celebrity Big Brother;: Live From the House 0.42 (5.5%)
Sky 1
A League of Their Own 0.42 (2.0%)
Got to Dance (20:15) 0.40 (1.9%)
Got to Dance (18:30) 0.37 (2.1%)
All including HD and +1 where appropriate
This is a great little show. Thanks for highlighting it.
In fact, it’s less ‘Million Dollar Mind Game’ and more ‘QI’. Not puzzles so much as quite interesting facts.
All the questions here are more like quirky facts that Stephen Fry could ask about in QI, and the banter that ensues is not unlike the light-hearted, humorous tone of QI also.
I suspect this would make it almost impossible to bring it to the UK (unless some channel wants to encroach on QI territory… although I gather Lee Mack already did that, didn’t he, on Sky’s ‘Duck Quacks Don’t Echo’?).
Shame, because British TV is crying out for some fresh ideas, and some more vaguely intelligent / brain-straining puzzle formats.
I’m personally desperate for someone to pick up Millions Dollar Mind Game or similar. LOVED the questions on that show.
Quick word about Rising Star in Germany.
It all blew up last night. A couple of acts were criticised for their song choices by the ‘experts’, but they quickly replied that they were told by the producers what they should sing! Certainly not the kind of drama they expected.
RTL has denied all of this, but it has certainly caused controversy. The ratings nosedived too;
Overall viewers: 1.75m (7.0%)
14-49 demo: 1.09m (12.6%)
It was beaten by the last episode in the series of Schlag den Star, which won the day in the 14-49 demo. Even more embarrassing for RTL, Rising Star was only half a million higher than the football on Sky!