Jeux Sans Frontiers

***Jeux Sans Frontiers*** (Known as It's a Knockout! to the BBC) was a television program produced by the European Broadcasting Union and Loosely based on the French program Intervilles (Which is still going today) The program ran from 1965 to 1982 and from 1988 to 1999. the EBU Has Had Plans to bring it back several times, but none of those plans has as yet surfaced.

## Format

In its original conception, teams from Belgium, France, West Germany and Italy competed each week in head-to-head competition between two cities/towns from two of the four competing nations. There would be sports events, but also studio based quizzes each week. Eventually, all teams will have competed against each other and the team with the highest cumulative points for each nation from the series would meet in two semi-finals, with the two winners meeting in the final. The first series in 1965 ended in a tie between Belgian town Ciney and French town St. Amand. A similar format followed in the longer 1966 series with more towns competing from each of the four nations.

The more familiar format began in 1967, when teams from Great Britain and Switzerland joined the competition and towns only appeared once in the series heats with each heat being hosted by one of the participant nations, culminating in a grand final. The quiz element was abandoned and the games became more comical (though none-the-less technically difficult), and began to be played in outlandish costumes (often large foam latex suits) with the contestants competing to complete bizarre tasks in funny games. The teams could not choose which of their members played each game. A draw was held to determine the game participants who were then allowed to rehearse the game once ahead of the broadcast recording. Each of the teams received a score for each game, which were umpired by one or two "international" judges (supported by referees from the participant countries), with the winner of each heat being awarded a silver trophy. The two judges/referees who became synonymous with the series were Swiss nationals Gennaro Olivieri and Guido Pancaldi, who were together on the show from 1966 to 1982. Pancaldi returned for the revived series in 1988.

Each heat was presented almost exclusively in the language of the host nation/broadcaster, necessitating commentators explaining and describing the games and state of play to their domestic audiences. This format made the episodes difficult to sell outside of the participants, offering few opportunities to recoup the program costs from international sales (although the format itself was licensed to many countries). From the late 1970s the BBC was charged with packaging the episodes for international sale including the English/British commentary. This encouraged sales in English speaking nations leading to broadcasts around the world. In some cases, the BBC would add a pre-show introduction from host Stuart Hall and would often trim the show's length from the broadcast version. Some episodes were occasionally cut to one hour editions for international sale.

Points were given for each game based on the ranking of the teams. For example, if there were six teams playing the game, the winner would get six points, with five for the second etc. Each team had to miss one game per episode, but all teams always played the final game. A joker could be played once by each team, which doubled their score for that game. The 'Fil Rouge' round was played individually by each team and after the 1969 series, no joker could be played on that element, although prior to 1970 jokers could be played on the 'Fil Rouge' and until the end of the 1971 series, jokers could also be played on the final game. This meant there were more points available for that game and many countries thus saved their jokers for the final game. The rules were changed from 1972 onwards, forbidding jokers on the last game. Belgium hosted the first heat of the 1972 series, but saved their joker for the final game. When the team captain presented it to the referees at the final game's start, they were told it was not permissible and thus for this heat, Belgium were unable to play their joker at all; the only time any team's joker was not contested. The Belgian team of Spa were too far behind the leading teams for the bonus joker points to have had any impact on the heat winners. With the increase in the number of teams to eight from the 1979 series on, the joker system was changed. Teams had to win the game to get a bonus of six points if they played their joker, with four points for finishing second and two points for finishing third. If they failed to finish in the top three for the game, there were no bonus joker points earned. The 'Fil Rouge' format was changed in 1981 so that all teams competed together in four repetitions of the game, with different team members in each repetition. The teams retained their best score/time from each of the four repetitions to determine the points after the fourth repetition.

## Trivia

* This Event Inspired Toytime International