The one who can do everything (pt5)

  Hello, and welcome to part five of a special series on SATA. 

This series will be discussing Dutch series De Alleskunner and British series 99-to-beat. It will be in many parts to be released over the next few months.

PART 5: MY 99-TO-BEAT DIARY (episode 2)

Episode 2 let's go!

<82>

We start with something you might not know about. The first game of episode two was to find needles in a haystack. 81 “needles” (actually, wooden chopsticks) were scattered inside a pyramid of hay, probably 10m wide and 2m tall. This was in the middle of the circle, on the sound of the buzzer we should rush in and start digging to find one. This was the first game of day three, and when we went into the studio that morning, the air inside felt heavy.

I anticipated this game would be something of a mosh (much more than the exercise balls), and I wasn’t wrong. From experience in more conventional mosh pits, I knew what to do: arms up, shoulders loose, and roll with the motion. I saw others who did not handle it so well, and got bashed and bumped, some landing with a face full of the soft but unpleasant hay. I established myself on the side of the pyramid and started to burrow like a dog, feeling the hay with my hands much more than looking with my eyes. Within seconds I had felt something, and a second grab in the same area produced me a chopstick. I moved out and back to the safe area on the side of the room. The air, which had been actively irritating in the hay-pit, still felt heavy and musty.

I was one of the first finishers, probably in the hay less than 90 seconds. As usual, we waited and watched as the rest of the pack completed the game, the space in the hay pit opening up as fewer people were left there. It became increasingly apparent something was not right. The players coming out of the hay pile were looking increasingly exhausted, and distressed. More and more people were coughing, and struggling to breathe. The quality of the air in the room, I started to realise, was getting much worse as all the hay was tossed and churned up by the playing of the game. At one point, a player in the pile had a nasty-looking fall, and needed help from the other players to get out.

There were marshals nearby who could also see this, and I think were uncomfortable, but no one seemed to have the confidence or authority to call ‘stop’. Eventually someone did, and everyone filed outside. There was then about 45 minutes spent outside, while medics and producers looked after the most badly affected. I felt rough, most people felt worse than me. A small number were really bad, with proper scary breathing issues, and a number of ambulances came. Additionally, everyone had this irritating hay all through their clothes.

A lot of discussions between participants and staff about safety and something of a blame game followed, which I’m not going to describe in detail. I will briefly say that the logistics of looking after 100 people (and you do have a duty to look after them!) are serious, and one can have the best of intentions, but still fail without adequate preparation and resources. 

Due to the confusion that followed this, the need to let people recover, and schedules being difficult to reorganise, we have two full days before...  

<82> again

And just like that we’re back. In case it isn't obvious: Game 82 v1 has been memory-holed. I don't know whether they brought in a substitute game somewhere or cut a game from later in the series, but since ep2 was broadcast with a full 7 games, it must be one of those.  

Fun fact: before we went into the studio for this game we were given a H&S briefing which told us that the game would involve animals, which were not exotic, we wouldn’t be touching, and were in small numbers. From this I deduced that we would have to be judging them in some way – in small numbers meant it couldn’t be counting – so weighing seemed the best option. I had time before the game to look up the typical weights of lots of farm animals: pigs, cows, sheep, horses.

Once in the room my tactics were simply don’t be lowest, don’t be highest. I had a look at the llama – it looked bigger than a pig, and smaller than a horse, which put me in the 100-250kg range. I thought that people would tend to hit round numbers: some people would surely go around 150kg, some people would surely go around 200kg. In the end, I wrote 195kg – I couldn’t see any world in which no one went above 200, and if it were incredibly the lowest guess, I’d still back it to be closer than the highest.

This game was very exploitable in another way though – despite instructions from the marshals, before the time for writing your guess was up, about 10 people had inadvertently revealed their guess, either by talking or showing their boards.

Finally, I don’t know why the two who were pulled up were the two highest rather than the highest and lowest.

 

<81>

The tape game is another game that I hadn’t seen in DA, but feels exactly like a DA game, so I was happy enough. For me, the game was all about getting the tape unrolled as quickly as possible – forcing it into the lunch box would probably be easy enough for everyone.

I wanted to do a hand roll motion to get the tape unrolled as quickly as possible. The obvious issue with this approach (and my nightmare situation) was that at the end of it the tape would be bundled and stuck onto one’s hand – and perhaps impossible to remove.

With my taskmaster head on I hatched a plan. I’ll emphasise we had been given some general advice by the boss marshal (who I think had become frustrated at too many specific questions about this or that strategy) that if something wasn’t disallowed, it was therefore allowed. I was a bit worried about doing something off-piste – I was probably bearing a greater risk that I’d be DQ’d than that I would lose normally, but I thought it was worth the risk to be able to say I’d done something unique.

So, at the start of the time (after getting the tape open, which took longer than I’d like), I removed my right sock, and slipped it onto my right hand like a glove. I rolled my hands to reel all the tape onto the glove-sock-hand easily, and then slipped it off and put the whole thing in the box.

Closing the box with the sock-and-tape was a tad harder than expected, but a couple of quick squeezes and the job was done. I think I was in the top 10 for this game, very pleased with my ingenuity and performance.

(I made sure the game was well over before asking to go back for my sock- I was willing to lose it if necessary!)

Note: Sadly I couldn’t find any b-roll of me in this game, so you’ll just have to take my word.

 

<80>

Another game that was new to me, but felt fairly easy. I was phenomenally nervous about this one – I thought my timing and judgement were ok, but it was just the pressure of having to focus in and be decisive in that moment when the tape slid.

We got a demo of this, and a two things concerned me. One was the speed of the retraction – well, that’s just the game. The other was the “ricochet” from opening and closing the clicker, which seemed quite violent, being enough to throw me off.

To deal with this I needed a clean on and a clean off. My plan was to start with my thumb on the button, push firmly down without regard for how the base would move, and then completely lift off at the end. As we sat in the lanes waiting to start, I stared at the measure, visualising how it would move over and over.

The buzzer went, I pushed down and adrenaline surged through my body. On some deep level, I judged the timing and jerked my hand away, and the timing was perfect! I think about 5 people got this game first time, and I was one of them.

There then followed a looongggg wait, as this game took a while to reset each time. I was nervously but calmly cheering for my friends to get through. 

Spot the lack of me at this stage

A little easter egg not shown on the show - after about 6 attempts, Nikki complained that her tape was dodgy. The marshals checked it and agreed. She got through on the first attempt with the new one.   

<79>

The pasta game was yet another that I’d never seen in my watching of DA. I hadn’t really loved the mouth-spoon game in the previous episode, and so I wasn’t super keen for more of the same.

Upon hearing the rules my instinct was to go for the “all 6 in a line” method, which would surely lead to a quick success. (In hindsight this was very wrong).

Let me try to explain why this game was difficult in logistical terms (if you don’t understand me you’re welcome to just try it). As the penne were added the spaghetti got heavy and bendy. The more that it bent, the more you needed to “angle up” your grip, less the penne just slid off the end. For me, this meant pressing the spaghetti down with the tongue, but that was unstable, and also moistened the spaghetti (ew) and caused it to break at the base. This happened a couple of times.

Holding the spaghetti deeper in the mouth reduced the pressure on the base, but then meant you were left short when trying to load the final penne. Through all my attempts, the fact that the spaghetti and penne could swing and roll about and that we couldn’t use our hands to stabilise made everything very chaotic.

I'm still in play at this point (bottom-left)

Additionally, I was in the front row for this game, which is never a good place to be. I could not see what other people were doing and only vaguely knew how many were through or left.

It took a cry from Nikki of “Tom – change strategy!” to get me to change from 6-at-once to 1-by-1. I was annoyed when I realised that I was in danger, because I’d been close to getting it a few times, but that did mean I wasn’t ready to give up. Along the way I broke several pieces of spaghetti and, on one occasion, dropped and broke all my penne and needed to get more from the marshal.  

And at this point!

Eventually, I had 5 loaded, and lifted the 6^th for about 3 seconds before my spaghetti broke. Fortunately, the boss marshal was right by me at that time, and was happy to give me the thumbs up based on that. I think earlier in the round she might not have been so generous. I think I was about 5 or 6 from bottom here – scary.

It’s worth noting at this point that having a near miss is a tough experience. You feel alone, vulnerable, incapable, and very very pressured. That’s why you’ll really notice people looking relived and emotional when they finish near the bottom – and the other contestants coming to hug and support them.

 

<78>

It’s getting toward the end of a long day – we’ve done 4 games already, but now the stakes are raised because it’s time for the team game. 1-in-6 is by far the worst odds we’ve faced so far.

I’ve seen domino games on DA, I’m pretty confident that out of six teams, one or two is going to have an incident during this game. As long as we stay cool and careful, that won’t be us and we should get through.

There’s not much else strategy for this game. We have some discussion about how far apart to place our dominoes – I want to be bold and go for about half the height of the bricks, others are talking about a palm-length or width.

We start really calmly and carefully. So much of this game is waiting around for your turn on the bricks, so the pressure really ramps up.  There’s evidently a problem – let’s call it a hazard – with the jengaified pile of bricks sticking together. I suspect they were piled up before the paint was completely dry. A few of our team have problems with this, before eventually Sue takes out the whole pile. This is around ¾ of the way through the race, when the pressure and pace is starting to pick up.

I’m not sure what to do about this – the rules weren’t clear about what should happen here, but I know I need to be handed a brick before I can run. We spend a few seconds putting some back on the table – I’m quietly aware that we don’t need all of them anyway – then go to place my brick. We’re back on track, but for less than a minute before Dan takes his fall.

Oh no!

In that moment, I’ve a real slow-motion memory of seeing Dan go, his foot touch the rail, and then all the bricks fall, one-by-one. Part of me is obviously thinking “oh, maybe this is my time then”, but the rest is down to action. We quickly scramble the bricks back to the start and then we need to get back into line and start running them again

I know we’ve got no chance of catching the other teams, but I still think there’s a good chance that something else will go wrong, and we’ll be competitive again. At this time, we see the other teams start to get through – this is a lot of noise (and the bang of the pyros), but I try to block it out.

My team are getting pretty despondent, and I remember just bluntly telling people “we’re ok, we’re going through. Something else will happen to them”. Fortunately, at this point the yellow team have their misfire and it seems like we’re back in the race. There’s a distressingly long period (I’ll emphasise again that there’s a lot of stressful waiting around in this game) where there are only two teams left and a lot to do. It looks like we are a little behind – again, I push for wider gaps between the dominoes.

We try to speed up, but again, there’s the fear of someone taking a fall or messing up. As we approach the final few bricks, I’m tempted by the idea of firing our line a bit early – we were told we just need a domino to land partially over the end of the rail, so don’t need to build right up to the back – that could give us the 2 or 3 brick gain that we need. I call for this, but I’m not near the front of the queue and it’s too little too late for the idea.

We watch the yellow line fall, hoping until the last second it might fail, but it doesn’t and their firework flares. We’re out, and after the first 60 seconds of hugs and tears, a weird kind of euphoria comes over me. I suddenly realise quite how much the pressure of the experience and the games has been weighing on me. I’m kind of giddy for the filming of our exit scene that takes place soon after. I wanted to drink in that moment, to enjoy holding my number – a key part of the show’s lore – and being cheered out of the circle.

I can't emphasise how much of a pleasure it was to share this moment with all my team, but especially Dan, Sue and Mike, who were fantastic people I really enjoyed spending time with. 

Afterwards, we head back to the hotel for some cold food and commiseration drinks. The next day, I travel home, the journey feels long and lonely. The comedown, not just from leaving that social group, but also mental space of being hyper-focused on specific tasks, is tough. I review messages from on the group chat discussing the remaining games and eliminations with a mix of curiosity and discomfort.

Of course I wanted more of an experience, I wanted to overthink more of the games, and I really wanted to find out What the One Thing That Means I’m Not De Aleskunner is. But, now that I know how it goes, the story seems really cool! I remember how excited I was when I got the news that I would be on the show. 

This was a wild and fun experience, and I’m so pleased to have been part of it. I got to see a little inside the factory, and learned that TV shows aren’t magic – they’re just normal projects, made by people, like any other piece of art. And I got to be one of the people who helped make what I think is (at least) an interesting copy of one of the best TV shows around – to be one of The 99, to beat.

 

Hence, I’ll end this instalment by showing you two pictures. The first is a screenshot I have, of De Alleskunner. This moment shows the first game from series 2 of DA, and shows the player who will be the 99^th to get through from this game, about to reach the final ball. 

I think it’s a perfect visual metaphor for what DA represents: the contestant almost out-of-bounds and the camera crew and balcony visible at the back of the shot. The contestant, blind and flailing, their struggle and stress in challenging moment. The others watching a silly and surreal game, and every inch of it massively mattering to someone, presumably.

Screenshot 2021-12-20 004047

I was inspired to take this screenshot because of how impressed I was by the first episodes I watched of DA. I was considering writing a blog post to promote this exciting discovery. Windows tells me that date of the screenshot was December 2021.

And here is a second picture. It’s one of the press pictures from 99-to-beat. 4 years later.

  

We will return for one more instalment. For now, though, I’ll settle down to watch the remaining episodes (I am relatively spoiler-free) and say good luck and Potverdomme, to Sarah, Nikki, Megan, Lydia, William, Will, Freddie, Georgia, and everyone else from The 100. 

The one who can do everything (pt4)

 Hello, and welcome to part four of a special series on SATA. 

This series will be discussing Dutch series De Alleskunner and British series 99-to-beat. It will be in many parts to be released over the next few months.

PART 4: MY 99-TO-BEAT DIARY (episode 1)

So, let us resume the story from part one. About 1½ weeks later than I was told to expect a response, and about 1 week before the first day of filming, I get a call to tell me I’m in the show. 

Hype! I'll talk in a later instalment about how excited I was, and what being on the show meant to me, for now I receive a flurry of paperwork including the rules of the show, in so much detail as I’ve explained them in the previous posts. We’re also told to think about our outfits, and to send a few candidate looks to the producers – which I massively overthink. 

I also go to Sports Direct and get myself a new, non-battered pair of indoor trainers, which I reckon are going to be pivotal. I pack a truly massive suitcase with all of these clothes (remember we could be there for 3 weeks!) and the cosmetics I need to look my best. (Brand partnership opportunities available :P)

I travel to the hotel, arriving the day before. The producers have hired two minibuses to shuttle us from the station, and so have staggered our arrival times so that the buses aren’t a bottleneck. I chat to a few people in the bus. At the hotel, there’s a huge temptation to hide away in my room, and not do anything. The prospect of suddenly having to meet and greet 99 people feels mammoth. But, I think, you’re here for the experience, and so head down to the bar.

I think I meet about 60 of the 100 that evening. At first it felt like some frantic speed dating experience: desperately trying to impress everyone by only saying the most inoffensive things. But, after some time, and some alcohol, I found the friendships start to blossom. After a fairly long walk to the nearest fast food outlet a good group of friends start to develop.

It seems like everyone was called about a week before filming, and some even later, which does good things for my impostor syndrome. I do feel in something of a minority that I have neither a media-related career, nor aspirations to do a ‘big’ reality show (Apprentice, Big Brother, etc.).

We’re asked to prepare for some brutally early starts – 7:15 in the hotel lobby, breakfasted and made-up for the day. This means waking at 6:00 sharp, which is a long way from my normal morning, and I expect this to cause problems. I try to get to bed early, but it’s not so easy to sleep with all the anticipation of the coming days.

 

Day 1

We’re taken to the studio, settle into the green room. This is a suitably massive room with drinks, chairs, and not much else. Pleasantly though, it's in an office block, not a light-industrial studio, which means mentally it feels like a safe environment to unwind. 

We spend the entire morning being filmed walking between various points inside and outside the studio, and get to know our circle positions. I am located between Megan and Nicky, two women with very different life experiences and senses of humour, both of whom are great. At some point we get our first look inside the studio: that’s a real wow moment.

I’ve mentioned in the previous part how the floodlights focus attention in the centre of the studio and make it seem smaller than it is – however I will now say that when on the dimmer “standby” lights the room feels very big – especially in height. Along one edge of the room there’s a technical area where the camera and light crew and producers and director are constantly busy; in the corner to the left of that edge is a balcony (about 1 storey high) where Adam and Ryan live.

Throughout all this my feelings are a mix of excitement, disbelief, not-really-sure-how-to-act, and sleep deprivation. To help with the last, caffeinated drinks and sugary snacks are in abundant supply. Less good in both quantity and quality is the supply of meals (we got lunch and dinner on-set). 

 

<100>

We’re solidly into the afternoon before we do game 1: the spacehopper game from the start of DA season 2. It’s a great first game: simple, visual, fast, and surreal. I look at the way the net is rigged up and try to anticipate which sides of the room might get more or fewer balls – but that’s not much use because we have to start from our designated circle spots. I try to visualise the ‘wave’ of us blindfolded contestants heading into the circle to look for balls. I imagine some sprinting to the middle and getting a ball there, and others searching around more slowly and broadly, and letting the balls diffuse out to them. 

I decide that the nightmare scenario is all the balls “in front” of me being taken and having to turn and start searching back around outside the circle. I remember that that happened to about 3 contestants on DA. Developing this, I decide a second nightmare scenario is losing track of where I am relative to the edge/centre of the circle, and so not being able to tell, if I’m encountering lots of claimed balls, whether it’s worth continuing forward or turning back.

 

To mitigate the second of these fears, while we’re being briefed, I discretely count the steps from the edge to the centre of the circle: 18 at a natural gait. Regarding the first of these fears, I conspire with my neighbours and my neighbours’ neighbours. I want us to create a kind of “screen” by moving forward at a consistent pace: we agree on a brisk walk, and will keep our arms wide and “no harm if we brush against each other a bit”.

I hope the above gives a sense of how much thinking and overthinking goes on when you have this massive situation in front of you, you have nothing else to do, you packed and dragged a heavy suitcase across the country for this, and you’re really, really tired. When I spoke earlier about the immense pressure and stress that DA creates and exhibits: this is that. Even remembering this game now in order to write this, my heart is racing.

By far the biggest conspiracy though is the rule regarding “verbal help” - this is a consistent rule for all of the games, and is worth really emphasising – once a player has completed (in this case, gotten a ball), they may “verbally help” anyone else. Again, I make agreements with my neighbours and my neighbours’ neighbours that if there’s a chance like this for any of us to verbally help each other (and in this game, that’s huge), we shall.

And just like that, it’s blindfolds on and listen for the buzzer. Almost none of the games are practiced, and we usually don’t get to feel or examine the equipment before. There was a collective sense of what, for real? as they told us this game was about to start – someone’s about to get eliminated! Already! – The moments waiting, blindfolded, for that first buzzer were probably the peak of the mad mad feeling of pressure, disorientation and adrenaline that I associate with basically all of the time actually playing the games. There was then an incredibly surreal 1 second between hearing the buzzer and hearing the balls land where I’m sure all of us were paralysed. Was that a false start? Then the soft but chaotic tapping sound of the balls bouncing around shocked us awake.

 

(Spot me dead in the middle here)

I walked briskly counting steps up to 18, my brain actively instructing my legs to move in turn like I was a toddler. After 9 steps, I brushed something – a ball moving away diagonally. After 11, one firmly landed in my grasp and I fell on it. The relief in that moment washed over me, and it probably took me another 10 seconds to get around to sitting up and removing my blindfold. When I did I remember being overwhelmed by the brightness – this was the first time we’d seen the room in the bright, “game” floodlit mode. At that point balls and bodies were still flying everywhere, but after a few more seconds we were down to a final dozen or so.

The very last few players were yelled at to get to their balls by virtually everyone around them, an experience that must have been quite overwhelming. Of course, eventually we are left with our no.1 loser. After a brief round of hugs and applause they are whisked away never to be seen again. (I don’t notice this at the time but it’s actually fairly brutal how the losers are ‘disappeared’ – they go immediately off to film some exit remarks, we don’t see them in the green room or the hotel again).

 

<99>

Game 2 isn’t familiar to me, perhaps it’s taken from DA series 3. We’re given an explanation but don’t see the slinkies until right before starting, and we’re not given any chance to practice or test the weight of them before the buzzer.

Note: for this game, and all the following games, I’m going to assume that you’ve watched the show, so know the rules, and have seen at least a basic idea of how it played out.

Starting this game is a little calmer, I feel confident it’ll last at least five minutes, and time to experiment or re-strategise if needed. Me and a friend discuss the idea of some “yoga” tactics: lying on the back and using the feet or legs to place the slinky.

My opening idea is to have a few goes “normally”, but to fall back to this yoga method (which seems more reliable) quickly if the normal technique doesn’t seem viable. The “nightmare” issue I’m worried about is having the slinky bouncing around like all hell after each attempt, and being unable to make consistent, controlled, attempts from a neutral start position.

The game starts. Again, the adrenaline is extraordinary. I make a number of attempts to flip up the slinky, a couple feel accurate to me, but bounce out. While waiting for the slinky to calm down between attempts, I take a look around. I see other people “landing” the slinky pretty much spot-on, but the slinky being too springy and bouncing away. No-one seems to be getting it easily. I revise my mental “safe time” from 5 minutes up to 10.

With this in mind I’m very happy to trade down to a slow, but less risky method. I hit the floor and start making attempts by lying on my back and gripping the slinky between my legs. I find by doing a shoulder-stand I can “drop” the slinky dead accurately onto the base, but it’s still landing with too much energy and bouncing out. The obvious solution to this is to drop it from lower, but I’m not flexible enough to get it to work.

I hear a few people finishing now – from the floor I can’t see much anymore – and while it’s easy to keep count for the first 2 or 3 cheers I hear, after about 10 or 15 I’ve only got a loose sense of how many people are left trying. I block this out though, confident that the game will have a long tail.

The next innovation I come up with to reduce the energy in the slinky before I release it from my legs is to “ratchet” as much of its length out as possible, so it’s only the last 30% of the thing that has to fall. I make another one or two attempts that feel really close, the slinky just tipping over and landing over my face. Finally, one lands without doing so.

I keep my head as still as possible, while raising my hand to summon the marshal for approval. I really can’t see anything and am scared to move, so this wait feels like ages. Eventually I get a clear thumb-up in my field of vision and move away. I’m probably about 25-30^th in this game.

Fun fact: this wide shot captures the moment I am receiving my 'thumbs up' (from the marshal on the right)

 

This game gives me my first experience of the fun-but-intense process of waiting around for the game to finish after you’re done. Firstly you’re looking for someone you vaguely know to chill with and debrief. Then you start looking around your friends (or your mutual friends) to see who you can cheer and encourage. In this case, I saw the friend who I’d discussed yoga with before still working in a standing position, and I yelled “yoga” at her repeatedly (a weird sentence to write).

This game dragged on. We had a steady stream of finishers for probably 15-20 minutes, but then we were left with a sizeable number (maybe 25?) who were really struggling. At this stage, the director hadn’t given us any clear instruction about where to go when done, so the floor became quite chaotic with people milling about, including some standing (imo) uncomfortably close to those who were still going.

 

A new technique evolved which involved 1-knee kneeling with the head down and the slinky compact, then rolling out to a lying position without it escaping. This helped the majority of the remaining players, and we were eventually down to 8, then 6. We seemed to get stuck then for ages – to the point where you start to wonder if the producers are going to call it. It must have been really tough for those six, stuck on the game for a long time and with big and noisy crowds forming very close around them.

A flurry of successes took it down to a final three, then the cameras really came in close. Then two, and then it was over.

 

<98>

 When we heard this game I was immediately quite pleased, because I’d seen it on DA. They do a better job of introducing it there, with a magician turning up to give a tutorial. We were given quite vague instructions for this one, and I think the intention was that we wouldn’t really understand the method when we started (this is one of a few times I suspected there was a desire – not necessarily realised – to Taskmaster up some of the games).

Unfortunately, during the time required to setup the tables we were given a break and plenty of people found clips of the “trick” on their phones. In case it’s not obvious, you need a steady hand to do this, but you also need the can to have exactly the right amount of liquid in.

My nightmare scenario was getting to a point where I had the wrong amount in, and was confused and going back-and-forth adding and removing liquid. Consequently, at the start of the time I did a quick test with a full can: “ok – full can falls flat – so falling flat means too full”.

My first pour seemed really close. It took me a while to confirm it wasn’t going to balance, and was too full. I poured out a little more and tried again. My hands were not steady, and with the can so close to equilibrium, and tending to spin around on the table, it was taking a while to confirm the (lack of) balance each time. The second attempt was still too full.

 

I kept myself calm despite really not feeling calm, and tried again. A lot of people were finishing around this point. The third and fourth attempts were still too full, on the fifth after an extremely long spin I got the balance.

I was somewhat taken by surprise by how quickly this one went. I think the game lasted about 3-4 minutes total; most people were done within a minute. I was probably 15 places from bottom – not ideal for a game I felt I would be good with - but in that moment, you celebrate being through and move on to the next one.

 

<97>

We then filmed the announcement of the next game (balancing balls on spoons). However, some technical issue meant that there was a last-minute decision to postpone the playing until the next day. It’s worth noting that the explanations we got in the circle were always very vague (and more detailed rules followed just before playing), and we didn’t see the real equipment at that time. Consequently, I was practicing back in hotel that night with a full-weight metal dinner spoon.

Note: During this first day, we have filmed everything in true chronological order – but from the second day we start to save time by filming the “announcement” and “walk-off” scenes in batches, quite a bit after the fact. This means we are given our actual real explanation of the game just a few minutes before playing it, which helps with the overthinking but not so much with the adrenaline. It also means the balls on spoons game was the only one that we had overnight to “practice.”

I found clasping this in my jaw for up to 5 minutes was doable, if unpleasant, and I thought I could probably go beyond 10 under pressure. I had to practice with a chocolate in place of the ping-pong ball, which was significantly heavier (foreshadowing).

 

Day 2

It’s the second day, although we’re all back in the same clothes. TV magic! We immediately go into the ball-balancing game. As we get the spoons, I realise that the spoons are very small, light and shallow, and the so this is a lot more about balance and stillness than endurance. I become concerned that my breathing (my mouth will be closed and my nose dangerously close to the ball) or a tension shiver could dislodge the ball, I work to calm myself down and relax my breathing.

I think this ran for slightly over a minute. I remember staring intently at the lights on the opposite side of the studio wall, something still and distant to keep me calm. Aside from that, I was focusing on breathing as slowly as possible, but still enough to be comfortable. I didn’t see and barely heard the crucial ball fall, so kept going for probably 10 or 20 more seconds until it was clear the game was over.

Of note, they did a pickup for the closeup of Caroline’s ball falling, which was pretty much the only pickup they needed the entire filming, which is impressive.

 

<96>

8 teams of 12 for the first team game. Suddenly, the odds get a lot more precarious. I was keen to be a positive influence on my team, I thought tactics and awareness could potentially help us a lot, and didn’t want to just be eliminated in a team game having thought, “Well, I did my part well enough”.

The drainpipe bowling game had a lot of complexity. I was happy to leave the skill of approaching the pins to someone else, but I was focused on the mechanics of getting the balls to them. We needed to arrange our team so that we had weaker players near the top, so any drops would be early. But the ball comes fast of the first, fixed, part of ramp, so we’d need a couple strong players to receive it. We needed to maximize throughput of our 3 balls, so how quickly after one should we release the next? And we needed to sacrifice at least one person to be on ball-loading duty and at least one person to be on ball-recovery duty. Should they be strong players, near the top, or the middle of the line? And did we want one, or more “aiming” players at the front to deal with the pins?

 

(Spot me 3rd from left at the back here)

We only had a few of minutes of planning time to solve this. About three of our team negotiated it all out, and then agreed it with the rest. I was in position two on my lane, basically just keeping the balls moving as much as possible. I focused on doing that accurately and fast (I think our team had only one drop, which was good), and didn’t really see or consider how other teams were doing with the pins. I know we finished 3^rd of four teams in our heat – but that’s enough.

Shout-out to Aaron, who was our retriever (in hindsight, wrong to give this job to just one person) and put in a massive physical effort running the balls back and forth and returning to his station in time.

 

<85>

Frozen t-shirts is a DA classic. It was also one of the example games given in the application form, so I expected everyone to be ready for this. As we’re on the floor preparing and some are doing interviews, everyone is exercising and jogging to try to warm up their bodies. I do the same but don’t go too hard, I don’t want to exhaust myself before it starts.

I’m a little nervous here, as I’m not a very big nor warm-blooded person, so might not have a lot of heat to transfer to the shirt. I can’t really identify a nightmare scenario, and plan to just try a range of different strategies, watch the rest of the group, and judge which one is working best.

For this game I actually took my shoes and socks off in advance, as I thought that if I got cold elsewhere, using the soles of my feet could be an option. I also put (ew!) a little saliva onto my hands, as I thought that moist things conduct better. I spent the first few minutes, doing a mix of rubbing, stamping, punching and ground-slapping the shirt. The latter feeling like the most activity, but probably actually just exhausting me.

This game was physically intense and I very quickly reached a feeling of real, physical, exasperation. I swore, loudly and extremely profanely, in Dutch and English (good television).

After this opening rush, a few other players were finishing and I looked around for what was working. “Peeling”, or prising apart the folds of the shirt – effectively unfolding it without properly defrosting it – was popular, and when I tried it, I was surprised how easily I could start to expand the thing. From there, it was a question of punching through from the holes to make the shirt hollow.

 

Spot me peeling in the back left here

 I briefly tried to transfer some heat into it, but again, I found the focused application of force, a “prising” technique with my bare hands, to be the best solution. Once I’ve created four connected openings, I try putting it on – this isn’t trivial, but again some force and wiggling was enough. I’m probably 30-20 from bottom here – that’s fine for a game I feel is not suited to my body type.

 

<84>

 Again, there’s something of taskmaster in this game.

My big fear in this game was breaking the paperclip. I’ve seen so many DA games lost because a player breaks one of their items, and that’s it. They’re just stuck. I think that in order to avoid this, I need to manipulate the paperclip once at the start: pick one shape for the paperclip, and stick to it.

Others were talking about hooking the coin in some way, but I couldn’t visualise how that would work. I couldn’t really see the clip being finessed enough to lift the coin through the aperture, so my idea was to invert the bank so that the coin lay over or near the aperture, and then lift/tilt the coin from below so that it fell out naturally. I figured the best shape for this would be a kite or diamond: something long enough to lift the coin, but wide enough that it could lie over it.

I started with some hail-Mary shakes of the bank, just in case the game was massively miscalibrated, but no such luck. After a couple of attempts I realise that I need to be looking at this from below, so I shamelessly drop to the floor.

 

I'm still in the game (but hidden - just left of Will L in the orange) at this point

I’m through about 10 from bottom here, that’s enough to give me a real scare. When the number of opponents remaining gets down that low, you don’t dare actually count them and just have to sit with a sense of being at real risk. There was a moment, lying on the floor, where I thought I really could go and had made my peace with it. 

Eventually, I change to just a slightly different angle, tilting the bank more and the clip less, and everything suddenly falls into place (and then out, haha). Once again, the sense of “that was a bit close for comfort” is overwhelmed by a greater sense of “yay!”.

...And this concludes my write-up of episode 1! I have of course watched the broadcast --- below are my immediate thoughts, which will probably develop into a “review the show” instalment at a later date.  

Tot de volgende meer!

The one who can do everything (pt3)

Hello, and welcome to part three of a special series on SATA. 

This series will be discussing Dutch series De Alleskunner and British series 99-to-beat. It will be in many (5? -- we’ll find out together) parts to be released over the next few months.

PART 3: COMPARING DE ALLESKUNNER TO 99-TO-BEAT

So, how does De Alleskunner compare to 99-to-beat?

(Of course, I’m comparing a show I’ve watched to a show I’ve not watched, so some of this might be speculative or wrong.)

Firstly, let’s talk about names. Almost everyone I’ve talked to agrees that 99-to-beat is a pretty meh name. I deliberately gave two translations of DA earlier – the allrounder is the better translation, and the one that could work as an English name – the one who can do everything is a better summary of the show’s premise. I’ve seen plenty of better suggestions for names, I’m sure you can come up with your own. 

I’m not sure putting the number in the name is the best idea – there’s already a crowded market for shows that reference numbers around 100, with Physical 100, The 1% Club and (if you're old) 1-Vs-100. In fact (a topic I’ll return to) the numbers are not important and do not specifically need to be 100.

As mentioned, DA is set in a large, airy warehouse or exhibition center. It has windows and natural light, and there is visibly ample space for all of the games. The space is dressed very mildly, with some signs and banners with the show’s logo scattered around – but is still very obviously a “real” place.

Contrastingly, 99TB uses a formal TV studio. It’s large, deep, and tall, probably about 2/3 the size of the Autotron. It’s dominated by a metal “spider”, about 2 stories tall, which holds 100 spotlights. These spotlights are used for the circle scenes, when the eliminated player(s) and the next game are announced. Over the series, they turn from white to red as each player is eliminated, creating a neat “roulette wheel” effect. Scattered sparsely around the edges of the studio are faux industrial panels with metal and chicken wire – a nice nod to the warehouse setting of DA.

Most notably though, the 99TB studio is dark. There is no natural light, and under the spotlights, the room feels a little like a spaceship. During (and only during) the games, intense artificial floodlights are used – these make the floor and the center of the room bright, but it feels contained: although there is ample space around the edges of the circle, the lighting and the spider draw focus just into the circle, which is less than half of the space.

DA has no real host – it is MC’d and narrated by the actor and comedian Frank Lammers. As mentioned already, he provides a chirpy, bouncy, and nasal voice – a parody of a PA announcer. His script is practical, but silly and funny.

99TB is hosted by Adam and Ryan Thomas – I’m not sure exactly how this will work. They filmed a link from the circle for the start of each episode, and the rest of the time they sat in a balcony like Waldorf and Salter and “reacted” to events. They are not equipped with the authority of most gameshow hosts - they are disarmed and with the audience, neither close to the players, nor in charge of the show. They therefore do not replace the disembodied voice, which is a cool and emotionless female voice. I quite like this – it’s a different but effective angle on that “parody of a PA announcement” idea -- but I’m a little sad that the element of fun provided by the bouncy Dutch MC might be missing.

On a similar note, it seems to me from the press releases, and the script that Adam and Ryan were using that 99TB is more explicitly and overtly ‘silly’, more ‘light entertainment’, than DA.

DA sets itself up seriously. The start-of-show narration doesn’t promise you chaos and hijinks, it describes a serious competition to find The Netherlands’ best all-rounder. 99TB is a fun family time, loads of contestants and crrrrrrazy games. This gives me a little hesitation: between Squid Game, Beast Games, and things like Taskmaster, there is a big market now for frivolous things done seriously – but you do have to do them seriously, else it’s just prescription lightent. 

 

The games? The games of 99TB are almost identical to the games of DA. (I was really pleased when I first walked into the studio, and immediately recognised the equipment for the first game.) I haven’t seen enough of DA to recognise every single 99TB game, but certainly most were, and all felt like DA games. Some of the games had small implementation differences compared to the Dutch game I knew, but nothing major. The games retained the playfulness, the humour, the surrealism, and the occasional unexpected edge that made for magic in DA. The only real difference is that in 99TB some of the team games (I’ll return to team games in a moment) had a little bit more complexity – a second step or a question of strategy, which made them feel a bit more special. 

Let's talk about timing. DA plays 10 games in each 44 minute episode – so has around 4-5 minutes per game. 99TB will play 7 games in a similar time – allowing for slightly over 6 minutes per game. I think that this could be a good change – allowing a little more time for the contestant’s reaction to the game, the game being played, and the “funnelling” effect as the game approaches a result. One criticism I have of DA is that it often jumps straight from the first few seconds of a game to the very last moments, when (and I can confirm this from experience) often a lot will happen between those ends.

I should mention at this point another show: “De Alleskunner VIPS”. As the name suggests, this is a version of De Alleskunner for “celebrities” (I’m not Dutch, so I can’t comment on the calibre of their celebrities). The set, games, and style are all recycled from De Alleskunner (in fact I suspect this is a way they can effectively get double value from some of their materials), and like with many shows, it seems to be the pattern that a civilian and a celebrity series get filmed back-to-back each year. 

Due to the limited supply of celebrities, seasons of DA:VIPS are shorter, with fewer than 100 players and fewer games per episode. (The numbers vary, but for example, season 2 featured 55 players, and 6 games per episode for 9 episodes.) Presumably this is because we can get more airtime from the celebs being entertaining than the general public – but I find that, regardless of not knowing any of the celeb players, DA:VIPS is better paced, less frantic, and more engaging to watch.

 You might spot an issue with the maths here – somewhat like DA:VIPS, 99TB will have 7 games per episode (and 8 episodes, totalling 56 games), but like regular DA, and as the name suggests, 99TB starts with 100 contestants. This means we sometimes need to cull more than one player per game, and 99TB’s answer to this is to exploit the team games.

 

Team games are part of DA. These games are fun, and let some of the most visually interesting, and materially complicated events in the show happen. They also provide a different kind of test, and different kinds of moments for the contestants: working together, being with (not against) your neighbours and friends, and needing to cooperate and strategize. 

But there’s a big difference – in DA, team games are still for eliminating just one player – this works by having teams compete, and then having the worst team play an individual version of the same game (for example an 81-player game puts the players into 9 teams of 9, with the worst team then playing the individual version). In 99TB, team games are for eliminating several players – there is one stage, and the losing team are all cut.

 

99TB has exactly one team game per episode, eliminating up to 12 players in one go. This difference has lots of consequences.

-         It means that the team games matter more. Rather than having the lifeline of the second individual part if your team loses, you are at risk of all being sent home. And due to the large teams, the odds of losing a team game are much higher than those of losing an individual game. For the players, this makes the teamwork, the strategisation, and the pressure during these games much more intense. For the audience, it means you risk seeing a whole bunch of your favourites drop in one go. You get your Red Wedding or Squid Game moments.

-        The team games in 99TB (compared to DA) have a little bit extra added to them, to make them more strategic, interesting, skilful, or complicated. They feel like a big event, which breaks up the potential samey-ness of the cycle for the audience.

-        (On that note - you might think that this would make the team games a good choice to put at the climax of the episode, to help each episode have more structure than just “here are some games and then we stop”. 99TB have not done so)

-        The prospect of losing in a team game felt less stressful. I’ll emphasise once again, how daunting the idea of seeing the whole field overtake you and getting left behind as the single loser is – in the team games, that wasn’t so bad; you would have a bunch of friends with you as you fell.

-        The team games created upsets. Strong characters who never seemed to struggle are suddenly gone. Things get shaken up. It’s difficult (and dangerous) to speculate, but this might have meant a wider and more interesting pool of players make it to the late episodes of 99TB than there would be on DA.

-        The team games mean that more players are eliminated in the early than late episodes, giving the numbers in the series a curve rather than a line shape. (For example, around half the players are eliminated by the end of episode 3 of 8). I do think this is a big positive, because it gives us a taste of the big-and-early chaos, but then bit more time when there are fewer players and we can focus on individuals. DA is probably at its least interesting between 80 and 60 players.

-        As a player, surviving a team game felt like landing on a ladder in Snakes and Ladders. While I was realistic about my chances of winning, I hoped to leave with as a low a number as I could – and suddenly we were 12 players further along. Although I enjoyed all the time filming, filming only 7 games per episode, and potentially 56 games in total, felt like a pleasantly more reasonable prospect than 10 and 99.

-        Players cut in a team game don’t get their individual moment in the spotlight, nor do they leave with the satisfaction of learning the unique “thing” that means that are not De Alleskunner. Although everything is fair in a literal sense, it might not feel so meritocratic or satisfying to have a strong or interesting player leave based on the team they were drawn into.

-        For me, it feels like by doing the team games in this way, the show is losing some of the narrative power that allows it to justify how cheap and silly some of the games are. “Yes we’re asking them to melt t-shirts – have you tried coming up with 100 original games?” doesn’t hit quite the same when the number of games in the series is a consequence of the tournament structure, rather than the premise. It makes the individual elimination games feel a bit tedious and unnecessary – why couldn’t we just do 10 of these team games and have the show all over in an evening?

 

I certainly can’t give you an unbiased opinion about the 99TB approach to team games and how it will seem to the audience. But, in my opinion, as a way to solve the problem of not having enough resources to make / screen time to show 99 games, I think it would have been better to go down the DA:VIPS route, and start with fewer players – maybe 50 or 60, for roughly the same number of games per episode, and have the team games stay two-stage and the eliminations one-by-one. As a bonus, this also means you can give the show a better title at the same time. 

To conclude, then. 99TB is a subtly, not hugely different show to DA. Most of the changes can be explained by 99TB seeking a more traditional, Saturday-night, Family-friendly vibe -- on this front I'm slightly concerned it might trip over itself, and end up without the enduring charm of DA. Some of the changes are practical, logistical changes (you need a lot more budget to create 99 games than 55) -- these are generally sensible but I personally think there was a better way. 

To be continued…