Megha and I just had a very important conversation about a television show on Doordarshan we used to watch as kids. For the life of us neither of us can recollect the name.
Here’s the deal – it was some sort of German games/ sports from the 1970s or early 80s. It had teams from different German villages, and all contestants would wear very weird period costumes. They had strange games like throwing pie, dunking in water etc. The games would have this Gamesmaster who would recite Eins, Zwei, Drei (one, two, three in German) and then blow a sharp whistle. There was this maniac clockwork thing to the whole games. Used to come on telly at about 1530 or 1400 hrs in the afternoon. Dreadfully strange and boring. Weird. Spooky on some days.
Any idea about the name of the telly show? Or more about the show itself?
Telematch.
Plus, it was rerun in the evenings about four or five years back. Not many people switched on DD at that time though. Many corporates I know use the telematch formats for team-building in their offsites, so the legacy is strong and kicking.
By the way, these days Takeshi’s Castle on Nick is quite wonderful too. Especially with Javed Jaffery deadpanning on the background.
It was called Telematch and was not all that bad as you claim it to be. There is one called Takeshi’s castle that the kids of these days get to watch. That fits your description to a T ( The kids might beg to differ though)
ah, to be a geek! don’t believe a word of what they say, it was called gedankenlautwerden.
nur scherzen.
Dhoomketu: *Round of applause* Here I was – middle and beyond the night, bugging Megha. And she tearing her hair out in grief. Will check that on Nick next time.
bharat: I am not claiming it was bad! Merely stating that I used to find it very weird. Maybe it was the costumes and the all-white cast. Something that put everyone on automaton. Second reference to Takeshi’s – must check it out now.
nevermind: Ah! God knows I cannot speak or even squeak in German but zu Scherzen aufgelegt sein. My other pet theory is that German spoken very fast sounds like Gujarati. Especially at 4 AM.
Looks like I started something and went for a coffee in the middle again! This is where a preview mode helps. It’s a wonder that Dhoomketu also mentioned Takeshi’s castle( in a different light dho) and I’ve seen it on Pogo while fighting with my five year old cousins askin’ them to watch something “better”.
YAY! Thanks dhoomketu, Neha’s question drove me insane.:)
*phew*
:) – at that note, there used to be another one on Doordarshan, this one was an animation series that carried for a really long time but I cannot remember the correct name – history of earth?
Had an old ‘Getafix’ like character who narrated the story of life etc.
The loveliest, haunting music it had.
Name anyone?
R
I used to love it!! Weird? Well, perhaps..but i loved it still! Thank you for reminding me about it:)
Its on Wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telematch
Did you create the stub?
gg
Hey thanks for raising the question that i have been wanting an answer to :)…
I watched it with my brother and we loved it ..at least i did …
and thanks again for the answers…i have seen some episodes of the Takeshi’s castle but they are not that interesting as telematch …
hi guys thanks for this rememberance of that entertaining game show i too remember it as telematch. could any let me know whether the germans play it these days or where can get an archieve of it…