Hello, and welcome to a special series on SATA. No, SATA is not back – SATA never went away. I reserve the right to write here whenever and however I want.
This series will be discussing Dutch series De Alleskunner and its derivatives. It will be in many (5? -- we’ll find out together) parts to be released over the next few months.
PART 1: DE ALLESKUNNER
Let me start by talking about De Alleskunner, a show I absolutely love.
De Alleskunner is a Dutch Gameshow where 100 players play 99 games, to whittle them down to one.
De Alleskunner itself is a spin-off from “Homo
Universalis”, a segment on a Belgian magazine show (which, yes, they played out
in 99 segments over 99 days) with the same concept. Think like how In for a
Penny spun off from Saturday Night Takeaway.
De Alleskunner is filmed in an abandoned paper factory (season1) or the autotron (seasons2-5). (Aside: I have never figured out what the autotron is. Is it car museum, that they somehow clear all the exhibits from? Or is it an airplane hangar? Or something else called that for historical reasons? Please write in.)
I first found out about DA in 2020, from Nick Gates aka BothersBar. We’re both big fans of two other Dutch gameshows: Wie Is De Mol and De Slimste Mens, (among many other old and foreign gameshows), and some clips from DA Season 1 were going around on Youtube. From the clips and a few translated articles, I got a nice sense of what the show was, but didn’t think about it any more. Later that summer, bored during COVID, I forked out for a VPN and started watching all sorts of foreign shows that I had not been able to before. (Ok, mainly Fort Boyard. In a way, all of what follows is a consequence of them deciding to geo-block Fort Boyard, so butterfly-effect that.)
I chugged through season 1 of DA over a couple of weeks as an after-dinner treat. I was using the Dutch channel’s online player and I was able to get a browser extension to translate the subtitles, so I could actually follow what was happening. I remember discovering ‘the magic’ of DA over those weeks: the onslaught of challenge after challenge, the highs and lows of survival and elimination, and the way that in 100 faces, certain people started to stand out – the natural heroes and champions of the competition.
I also (checks notes) enjoyed that they used Extreme Ways in the soundtrack.
In September that year, the company I worked for at the time (who were lovely, fun people who were always up for a challenge) were looking for some fun events we could do to keep people happy (remember, we are still right in the middle of lockdown here). I invented, pitched, and ran, “the 95% challenge”.
The 95% challenge was a multi-week event for about 60 players (around half of them went the distance) – each week they were sent “homework” of 12 games – each game took less than 5 minutes and had some objective criteria which allowed me to rank all entries. The top 95% in each game would score one point. Anyone who completed all 48 games in the top 95% (I think around 7 of the 60 did so) won extra special kudos. Of course, this was De Alleskunner in all-but name, although I think my changes made it work better in the circumstances.
About a year later, smash hit Squid Game came out on
Netflix. I really enjoyed that show (it was gamey, foreign, and genuinely
gripping), and I remember a certain cultural mania just after where everything
was being compared to Squid Game. I remember thinking that with its warehouse
style, player “uniforms”, sneery disembodied voice, array of wacky games from
ordinary objects, and emotional highs and lows, DA was “the closest thing” to a
real Squid Game that had ever been done. I even started writing a SATA post on the
topic, but (fortunately?) it is lost to history. I did however, find this
discord message:
Now, jump forward over two years, to some time in 2024. A rumour went around that we were getting a show called 99-to-beat, which was the rough translation of “99 - wer schlägt alle?”, which is the name of the German adaption of De Alleskunner. Again I need to thank BothersBar who both provided the rumour and the connection (via the German show) to DA. Because a few years had passed, the Dutch channel (SBS6) had uploaded seasons two and four to youtube, where they are still viewable. There were also a lot of clips of other versions around, especially the German version. I got interested in the show again, and watched season 2, which opened with a 90-second compilation set to thesong Legends Never Die by Against the Current. This 90s clip is awesome, if you do nothing else for me, go watch it now.
I mention this because that song then lodged itself so deeply in my subconscious that MONTHS later, when I heard it randomly somewhere else, I was suddenly reminded of DA.
Anyway, I watched season 2, and I also wrote this comment
(which Nick then republished with my permission) on discord because people were
totally confused by the rumoured format of the show:
You’ll notice that my comments there are not 100% positive! I had some doubts about how well DA would translate to Britain, and to ITV. We’ll return to that discussion in a future part…
Then come the summer, the applications open for ITV’s 99-to-beat. Reminded of the show, and with suddenly a lot of free time on my hands, I also get around to watching season 4 of DA, “just for fun”.
I do think at this point I was the British person (aside from probably some of the people who were working on producing 99TB!) with the most knowledge of De Alleskunner.
To be continued…