Just
as Great Britain and France had their own Domestic Series (It's A Knockout and Intervilles,
respectively), West Germany had their own series called Spiel Ohne Grenzen which was made by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (more commonly
referred to as WDR) and broadcast on their ARD channel (in common with Jeux
Sans Frontières). Like its British and French counterparts, Spiel Ohne
Grenzen
was more than just a joust between towns, as the winning teams would qualify
for Jeux Sans Frontières.
The
series would undoubtedly look familiar to viewers of It's A Knockout
and Jeux Sans Frontières, as its format was much the same and games
often involved outsized and humourous costumes. We suspect that Spiel Ohne
Grenzen was being made in the
mid-1960s, concurrently with their participation in the International
competitions. German teams were so successful in JSF
events in those early days that it seems highly likely that they had practice!
However, in terms of solid evidence we can date Spiel Ohne Grenzen back
at least to
1971.
Bizarrely, there is now more interest for
Spiel Ohne Grenzen outside of Germany,
from places as far afield as Argentina and Latin America, India, the Middle
East, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, where the programmes have been repackaged by
Transtel Cologne under the
title Telematch and are still occasionally
repeated. Apparently, the showings in India still rate well in audience terms.
These overseas showings were all the result of Transtel's canny decision to
dub the shows into Arabic, English, French, Hindi and Spanish.
The
format of the show changed for the last three years that Spiel Ohne Grenzen was
in production. Previously a weekly competition where teams from two West
German towns would compete against each other for the honour of representing
their country in Jeux Sans Frontières, from 1978-1980, there were only
two events staged annually, with each featuring five teams. The top three
teams in each of these competitions would go through to the JSF events,
along with the highest scoring fourth-placed team in the two heats.
As an example, here are the results of the two 1980 qualifiers:
Todtnau,
Bellheim and Bad Wurzach from Heat 1 and Willingen, Groß-Umstadt and
Groß-Zimmern from Heat 2 qualified directly to the 1980 JSF Heats.
Both 4th placed teams, Baunatal and Walldorf, were tied on points, so a ballot
was held. As a result, Baunatal were selected to play in JSF.
