One that I've got into recently is Schlag den Raab. Which... well, it's German, which for someone in the UK is a challenge, to say the least! But there's a bunch of UK-based game show enthusiasts who have started doing live commentaries on the episodes as they're screened, and that makes it rather watchable. It springs to mind now because there's an episode on in an hour or so, and they're planning to run commentary for this one, so if you're interested in following along, check out
www.bothersbar.co.uk for the relevant links.
As for the game itself? The host is German TV personality Stefan Raab, although he's not *really* the host - he's a competitor. One participant is selected from a phone vote to play against him in a series of games, kept secret in advance from both the participants.
Not a small list of games, either; up to fifteen per episode. The first game being worth one point, the second worth two, meaning the viewers are guaranteed at least eleven to watch, and things get genuinely tense at the end
The prize is 500,000 euro in a rollover system; each episode it's unwon, it comes back for the next show. It doesn't operate on a fixed schedule - there's one episode every couple of months, and we're just coming back from the Summer break.
The real appeal of them, though, is the games. There's a few of a quizzy nature, a few strategic ones, and a few action ones, along with hybrids, and they're usually quite creative and tense. There's one point where they'll go outside for a couple of games that need a larger environment to play in (motorised races, for instance)
Memorable games. Names... if I can remember them:
Haidong Gumdo: A martial art involving chopping paper with a wooden sword; the objective being to be sufficiently smooth to cut the paper cleanly and straightly.
Ice football: Self-explanatory. Football played on ice. Not, it's important to highlight, on ice *skates* - on flat shoes, on ice, one-on-one. Hilarious.
Miniature table tennis: Ping-pong played on a half-size table. Actually genuinely a compelling game, despite looking absurd.
Molkky: A skittles-type game, but with very interesting rules. Each skittle is numbered, and you throw a block of wood at them. The key rules of note: if you knock over *multiple* skittles, you score the number you knock over. If you knock over just *one* skittle, you score the amount on it - so sometimes you'll want to knock down a cluster, and sometimes you'll want to single out a single target. Add to this the interesting rule that skittles are replaced *where* they end up, so there's also strategy in creating useful situations.
There was a game where there was a target shaped vaguely like a wedding cake on a pole, a circular pyramid with tiers - the contestants scored by throwing beanbags such that they *stayed* on a tier and didn't fall down. Again quite tense when a beanbag that was secure was knocked off.
There was a wood-chopping game, where with various blocks of 1kg wood you had to chop in pieces as close to 500g as possible.
They're unafraid of doing various races; there was one in a pedal car that went around the back corridors of the studio, they've done snowmobile racing, biathlons, go-kart racing
There was a game, the fifteenth and final game in a tense episode which required running to the other side of the studio and ringing a bell. However, with one major catch - are you familiar with Oasis, or other similar brands, blocks of green foamy stuff used by florists to make plant displays? The players had to
tunnel through a massive block of that. For several million Euro, after the exhaustion of the previous fourteen games.
Basically, it's a grab-bag. You're never quite sure quite what you're going to get next. It's hugely varied, but the games are usually consistently at least hinging on an interesting idea.
One of the nice things about it that couldn't really happen on the UK schedules is that it's a live, open-ended programme. That is, it doesn't have a fixed end time, and the games are allowed to reach their natural conclusion; there was a notorious tablecloth-removing game that went on for ages.
So, yeah. I'll be settling down for the night with it, and we'll see how it goes!
