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…