Do you understand fun?
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Do you understand fun? |
 | |
| Country of production |
 Germany Austria (1980–2000, since 2018) Switzerland (1983, since 2016) 
|
| original language | German |
| Year (s) | since 1980 |
| Production company |
Süddeutscher Rundfunk (1980–1998 ) Kimmig Entertainment (1980–2014, since 2018) Südwestrundfunk (since 1998) Bavaria Studios (2015–2017) Österreichischer Rundfunk (1980–2000, since 2018) Swiss radio and television (since 2016) |
| length | 180-195 minutes |
| Episodes | 171 (+ 18 Best-of , 87 The best of Do you understand fun?, 1 winter special , 1 Unforgettable - do you understand fun?, 1 children's special ) |
| Broadcasting cycle |
4–7 times a year |
| genre | Entertainment show |
| idea | Kurt Felix |
| Moderation | Guido Cantz (since 2010) |
| First broadcast | January 31, 1980 on Das Erste |
Do you understand fun? is an entertainment show in which people are intentionally put in an awkward position while being filmed with a hidden camera .
concept
Hidden Camera Short Films Are the Essential Element of Understanding Fun? . People and celebrities are brought into unexpected positions by decoy birds . The audience and television viewers should enjoy the resulting comedy and malicious glee. The situation is finally resolved by the host of the show or the decoy himself informing the “victim” about the prank. Since 1983, the concept of the Saturday evening show has included not only the films with the hidden camera, but also conversations with some “victims”, especially with celebrities, as well as shows. In Kurt Felix's time , only musicians were guests who he had caught with the hidden camera shortly before.
Since the 1990s, SWR television has occasionally repeated the best pranks in half-hour broadcasts.
Adaptations and imitators of the concept can be found, among other things, in the comedy trap or in various clip programs in which films made with hidden or less hidden cameras are shown.
History of the show
The show is an evolution of television broadcast Teleboy Swiss television, which aired from 1974 to 1981 and were regularly interspersed with the already movies with the hidden camera. Kurt Felix was also the inventor and presenter of this show. The hidden camera is based on the WDR broadcast caution camera with Chris Howland , which came on German television in 1961 and in turn was based on the American broadcast Candid Camera by Allen Funt . Do you understand fun? was first broadcast on January 31, 1980 as a 30-minute broadcast in the evening program of the First as a co-production of the SDR and the NDR and moderated by Kurt Felix.
In 1983 Kurt Felix developed the show into a big Saturday evening show, and his wife Paola joined as a co-host. During this time, the SDR show had a cartoon mascot , the so-called joker . The yellow, vulture -like animal with the diving mask and colorful beak was like Wum and Wendelin from Grand Prix questioned about events of the mission and answered with amusing comments. Karl Dall also provided amusement during this time by playing the films as a chaotic assistant. He was also featured in pranks on the phone . During each broadcast, a “victim” was given the joker in the form of a weathercock . At that time, the musical design was in the hands of Dieter Reith , who accompanied the invited artists live with his big band in front of mostly very elaborately designed sets. Since 1981, most of the hidden camera films have been produced by the Ortenau media entrepreneur Werner Kimmig and his company Kimmig Entertainment . The most famous decoys under Kurt Felix were Wolfgang Herbort , Pit Krüger as well as the Swiss Heino Orbini , René Besson and the ski acrobat Art Furrer .
From 1992 onwards several well-known moderators were used, but could not build on the successes of Kurt Felix and his team. Initially, the concept was tailored to Harald Schmidt ; Significantly, the show was now subtitled The Harald Schmidt Show . The joker, whose cheeky beak was trimmed in the mid-1980s, and all the other long-term contributors (Paola, Karl Dall, the big band) no longer appeared. After Schmidt left in 1995, Dieter Hallervorden (1996/1997) and Cherno Jobatey (1998-2002) took over the moderation.
From 2002 onwards, Frank Elstner tied back more closely to the original broadcast concept. As a counterpart to the “idiot” Karl Dall, he brought the SWR3 voice imitator Andreas Müller for the phone prank and the comedian Bodo Bach into the show. The animated doll Kurti in the now regularly presented machine prank became the new mascot. The illusionist Simon Pierro brought in his magic and created a new genre of pranks. The decoys Oliver Hiefinger and Klaus Sommerfeld became well-known faces in the show, as was the “little fat guy from Felix”, Wolfgang Herbort, in the 1990s, who is now behind the camera while recording a number of pranks. The scheduled airtime of the show was extended to almost 135 minutes under the direction of Frank Elstner; this could be covered by 30 to 40 minutes.
The new title and show music, composed by Darius Rafat , has been available since autumn 2002 .
On November 21, 2009, Frank Elstner presented the moderation to Guido Cantz , who presented the show on April 10, 2010 for the first time.
In mid-August 2010, Paola and Kurt Felix, Karl Dall, Wolfgang Herbort and the new presenter Guido Cantz celebrated the 30th anniversary of the show in a Best of Do you understand fun? . The special broadcast was recorded on the property of the Swiss moderator couple in St. Gallen.
A new loading concept was successfully tested in the December 2011 broadcast from the Maimarkthalle in Mannheim . Bülent Ceylan , who was playing his program at the same time as the broadcast in the nearby SAP Arena , was asked by two people who allegedly came from the public order office to end his program for noise protection reasons. The whole process was fun from Understanding? broadcast live from the SAP arena.
Since 2015, the program is no longer recorded in different halls in Germany, but at a fixed location. A tender by the lead SWR had shown that a permanent studio in the Bavaria Studios in Grünwald would save around 1.5 million euros. So is Understanding Fun? since then produced in Grünwald. The costs per shipment are around 1.2 million euros.
The program Do you understand fun? now after a 36 year break on the Swiss broadcaster SRF 1 , as well as in Austria after an 18 year break on ORF 1 again since April 14, 2018 .
On April 4, 2020, the 40th anniversary of the show was celebrated similar to the 30th anniversary with the highlights from the past 40 show years. Due to the coronavirus pandemic , however, most of the guests were switched on via video and the show took place without an audience. Only Bülent Ceylan and Eckart von Hirschhausen were present as guests in the studio .
Moderators
| Moderator | Period | consequences | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kurt Felix | January 31, 1980 | until December 1, 1990 | 1– 53 (53 programs) |
| Paola Felix | November 19, 1983 | until December 1, 1990 | 25– 53 (29 programs) |
| Karl Dall | November 19, 1983 | until December 1, 1990 | 25– 53 (29 programs) |
| Harald Schmidt | 17th October 1992 | until May 6, 1995 | 54– 69 (16 programs) |
| Dieter Hallervorden | March 16, 1996 | until April 26, 1997 | 70– 76 ( 7 programs) |
| Cherno Jobatey | September 19, 1998 | until February 2, 2002 | 77– 93 (17 programs) |
| Frank Elstner | September 28, 2002 | until November 21, 2009 | 94-136 (43 programs) |
| Guido Cantz | since April 10, 2010 | since 137 (50+ programs) | |
Audience ratings
.JPG)
In the times of Kurt and Paola Felix, around 21 million television viewers tuned in to the show. Between 1992 and 1997 the show had only mediocre success on television. But with the change of moderator from Dieter Hallervorden to Cherno Jobatey and the change of concept to the tried and tested, the audience came back. Cherno Jobatey's first broadcast on September 19, 1998, tuned in to around ten million television viewers, bringing ARD a market share of around 40 percent. In the years 1998 to 2002 the quota leveled off at six million viewers. The number of viewers reached a peak again in November 2001 when Jennifer Lopez appeared on the show.
With Frank Elstner, the show has had respectable ratings since 2002: Around seven million viewers switched to Understanding Fun? and gave ARD market shares of almost 25 percent.
Under the new presenter Guido Cantz, 5.22 million (April 2016) people last watched the program, which corresponds to a market share of 18.2 percent.
At the live anniversary edition for the 40th birthday in April 2020, which took place for the first time without a studio audience due to the coronavirus pandemic , the show achieved the best rate in 15 years with 6.4 million viewers. This corresponds to a market share of 19.6 percent.
criticism
Some people find the concept of the program annoying and an invasion of privacy or personal rights. In Germany, the secret sound recording of the non-publicly spoken word and the secret recording of images in an apartment or a room specially protected from view are prohibited under threat of punishment ( § 201 StGB and § 201a StGB). Subsequent consent ("approval") does not remove the illegality of the recording.
The show has regularly failed in media criticism since the late 1980s. As early as 1988 Hörzu wrote :
“Paola and Kurt Felix are pausing until November. OK then. Because the team that cooks up the jokes for them also needs a pause to think. Such cramped gags as St. Nicholas in summer Mallorca or the elephant in a china shop are evidence of this. "
The criticism hit all the moderators since Paola and Kurt Felix and was increasingly focused on the basic concept of the show. On the continuation of Harald Schmidt in 1995, Hörzu again wrote :
“Farewell made easy. Harmless gags (garden hose) showed: the show is out of breath. Highlight: Italo-cuddler Eros Ramazzotti . "
Spiegel Online commented in 2007:
"Frank Elstner's narrow-minded 'Do you understand fun?' - joke is hardly more than poorly performed country theater."
As the ratings show, what was fun among the population ? always welcome. Kurt Felix achieved record ratings of over 20 million viewers in Germany alone and 30 million across Europe. In 1990 Paola and Kurt Felix received a Bambi for the most successful TV entertainment in Germany in the 1980s. Kurt Felix, whose biggest television hit Do you understand fun? was, received several awards for his life's work (Bambi 2003, SRG idée suisse media award 2005, Swiss television award 2011).
Awards
- German Comedy Award 2014 in the Best Hidden Camera category
Similar formats in other countries
- In the USA , where the first hidden camera program called Candid Camera was invented by Allen Funt back in the 1940s , there were numerous similar series such as Spy TV, Totally Hidden Video (1989–1992), Oblivious (2002–2004 ), Punk'd (since 2003) and Girls Behaving Badly (since 2002).
- In France , the first hidden camera show, La Caméra invisible , went on air in 1964. Later, various French comedians such as Jean-Yves Lafesse, Pascal Sellem and Laurent Baffie resorted to pranks.
- In Canada , the program Surprise sur prize was so successful that after a few episodes it was also broadcast in France. Kurt Felix's idea of also tricking celebrities was successfully taken up. The program Just for Laughs has been in existence since December 26, 2000 .
- In the Netherlands there has been the show Bananasplit since 1980 , whose predecessor was the show Poets .
- Surprise, Surprise has been broadcast in Great Britain since 1984 . Beadle's About was on Channel 4 from 1987 to 1996 and Trigger Happy from 2000 to 2002 .
- In Poland , between 2004 and 2005 and again in 2015, Mamy Cię! produced and sent.
- The hidden camera is very popular in the Arab world . The Egyptian television produced for several years for the Ramadan program broadcasts with different names and presenters. In Algeria , the hidden camera is broadcast under the name Dzscoop .
literature
- Christian Schertz: The protection of the personality from secret image and sound recordings . Archive for press law, 2005, p. 421-428 .
- Max Sieber (longtime producer of the show): Do you understand fun? In: hits, flops and the most beautiful cracks. My 40 years behind the scenes in show business. Giger. Altendorf. 2018, pp. 121-131
Web links
- Do you understand fun? in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Do you understand fun? at Fernsehserien.de
- Do you understand fun? at Südwestrundfunk
- Do you understand fun? on YouTube
Individual evidence
- ↑ Do you understand fun? ABC of the ARD
- ↑ spiegel.de: This week on TV , 5/1980
- ↑ Guido Cantz replaces Frank Elstner Bild.de, September 26, 2009
- ↑ October 24, 2014: Bavaria is to produce large SWR entertainment shows in the future | Communication | Company | SWR.de. August 4, 2017. Retrieved September 24, 2019 .
- ^ An unprecedented wave of indignation spills over public television . In: DER SPIEGEL . ( spiegel.de [accessed on October 6, 2017]).
- ↑ GEZ and TV fees - are ARD and ZDF allowed to collect more? In: bild.de . ( bild.de [accessed on October 6, 2017]).
- ↑ «Do you understand fun? - Swiss Special »with Paola Felix, DJ BoBo and Röbi Koller kleinreport.ch, October 27, 2016
- ↑ The hidden camera is back on ORF kleinezeitung.at, April 2, 2018
- ↑ 40 years "Do you understand fun?" - The big birthday show. Retrieved April 4, 2020 .
- ↑ Quota report on quotenmeter.de , accessed on October 1, 2016
- ↑ Hörzu 23, June 3, 1988, p. 51
- ↑ Hörzu 21, May 19, 1995, p. 104
- ↑ Loser Raab beats them all Spiegel Online, June 10, 2007
- ↑ Kurt Felix consulted on March 22, 2012