Let’s Get Married (2011, RTL4, The Netherlands)

We’ve already done a feature on the original Love Letters through our feature on the direct German version Tramhochzeit. But now it is (sort of) BACK! reimagined by Talpa, minus Linda de Mol, but with Russian Roulette style trapdoors.

It’s Let’s Get Married!

Here’s our host Winston Gerschtanowitz. He has a bit more of an exciting role to play than a usual host, as you will see. Hashtag, there.

In Let’s Get Married, two recently engaged couples compete to get married that night live in the studio. Here are our first pair of contestants…

And here is tonight’s other couple.

They are joined in the game by nine friends and family standing on the giant wedding cakes flanking the main staircase. They are each standing on a trapdoor. Everytime a couple lose a game, one will be randomly eliminated by falling through the trapdoor. At the end of the show, whichever couple has players still standing will be the winner.

The first game is a game of luck – one giant die, three faces with one couple on, the other three with the other. The die is chucked from the audience on to the studio floor, whose faces will be showing on top?

It’s happy couple number one! That means the oither couple are about to lose a player.

The lights dance around the cake until it stops behind one of the players. Winston quickly asks who they are…

…and through the floor they go This is often accompanied by a comical computer graphic – a big splash, some exploding fire, the sound of lions, that sort of thing.

Game two introduces us to the jury for the first time, 50 members of the audience who have been given voting pads. These are neutral audience members.

In game two, the jury will be voting on which proposal they think is the best. Couple number one has the female surprising her boyfriend who is with friends who are in on it in a cinema with a specially made film (The Hangover Goes Dutch). The film ends with her bursting into theatre…

… and dragging her boyfriend up the front before popping the question. Good fun, and in my mind more fun than the other proposal involving a helicopter and a horse drawn carriage…

… which the jury vote for anyway. Couple number one loses a player.

The next game is the action game.

The females are asked questions based on famous relationships (in this case based around the dates of royal weddings). If she gets the question right that means her bloke can earn points.

The man gets in a box car. He will go down a slope.

The object is to steer the car to the finishing line whilst avoiding the stacks of obstacles.

Winston counts all the surviving stacks, then gets the production crew to reset the course, with comedy fast forward sound effect. Both couples get two attempts, and the best total score wins the round.

The jury will vote again in the next round, basically the brides read out a speech to their parents telling them how much they mean to them and so on. There are usually tears.

The next round is seemingly the His and Her’s round from Mr and Mrs. Both couples get the same six questions simultaneously and they get three seconds to make a selection of who the statement best refers to in their relationship by bursting the balloon that represents the other person. The couples score a point each time their choices match.

In the final round before the final game, the grooms read out a prepared romantic speech to their bride to be telling them how much he loves them etc. The jury votes once again on who did it best.

This is one of the post-drop computer graphical effects. Not even Talpa would burn its contestants alive. Not just yet, anyway.

The grand final is played out on the wedding cakes. Each player represents a life (of sorts) and as you can see our two couples are atop each cake and act as the final life. When all of one team are eliminated, the game is over.

Teams are asked questions alternately. Each time the question asks what percentage of Netherlanders think in a certain way – presumably they are all romance related, but I can’t be sure. Once they lock in an answer, a contestant from the other team is asked to guess whther the actual answer is higher or lower than the original guess. If they are wrong, they’re out, if they are right then the original percentage gver is eliminated.

Potentially this round can have 15 questions, which goes on a bit.

However, to give more power to the couples in question, if they think the percentage their teammate has given is way out they can hit a buzzer setting off lots of flashing lights and overrule it with an answer of their own.

The couples play as one, so when it’s down to the final life, them, they have to stand apart on seperate trapdoors and will go together if they lose the next question.

And despite starting with a two life deficit, these are our lucky winners! The losers drop through the trapdoor. But whilst these two get ready for their wedding, the losers get to sit on the sofa and to be told they were great contestants and will win their wedding clothes as worn in a recent shoot.

Incidentally, a lot of wedding firms advertising during the breaks with official Let’s Get Married backing.

The studio is transformed into a place for a wedding ceremony.

And look! Winston the host, an actor by trade and not a registrar as far as I know, is the one who gets to conduct the ceremony. I don’t know about Dutch wedding laws, so don’t know if this is a show wedding and they’ve got to do it all again officially or what.

And there we go, everyone’s very happy and they couple also win a holiday for their troubles.

The show’s first four week run began with a respectable 1.6m, but dropped to 1m by week four, but doubtlessly the targeted advertising works in its favour.