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Jeux
Sans Frontières returned to British TV screens in 1991, as S4C dipped their toe in
Knockout
territory, entering a selection of teams from Welsh towns. These programmes
were limited to the Wales and West region of the United Kingdom and were broadcast in Welsh.
The Welsh channel's involvement came about as a result of a
chance encounter at a television marketing event at the Palais des Festival,
Cannes in the south of France. This was at a time when Welsh broadcaster S4C
was angling to become involved in international co-productions and were
courting programme makers from Brazil regarding the possibility of
co-producing tele-novellas together. While at the Brazilian stand at the
event, S4C's Commissioner for Light Entertainment, Ifan Roberts, found himself
immersed in a conversation about 'the old It's A Knockout', which he
discovered was still being made and broadcast in mainland Europe, but lacked a
British broadcast agreement. It set him thinking.
Months later, S4C representatives turned up at a meeting in
Venice and tried to persuade the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which held
the rights to the series, to allow the Welsh channel to come on board. The
committee agreed and S4C were invited to the first planning meeting for the
1991 series, which took place in December 1990 in Geneva. The meeting proved
fascinating and S4C began to get an idea of the immense complexity of the
project, which totally caught their imagination. S4C executive Ann Beynon
later recalled: "To record a series of eleven programmes in five different
European countries with six teams in each programme, five of which had to be
transported from their respective countries for each programme seemed to need
a mathematical genius to sort it out. It may have been like playing
three-dimensional chess but it worked so well... S4C is by now involved in a
multiplicity of co-productions with a host of partners from Japan and the USA,
to Russia and Germany. They are all challenging in their complexity and
infuriating and exciting in terms of creativity. Jeux Sans Frontières
is probably the most challenging, infuriating and exciting of them all. It is
also a series that 50 million people throughout Europe want to watch because
it is good entertainment, which is what it's all about at the end of the day."
As part of this year's Jeux Sans Frontières season, the
Spanish broadcaster RTVE hosted a lavish double-header in the grounds of their
Prado Del Rey production facility in Madrid. These were on the themes of The
History of the Circus, which included an impressive Roman-era set, and The
Origins of Madrid.
In the last year of their three year participation, the
underdogs from the tiny republic of San Marino achieved a creditable three
International Heat victories. San Marino accounts for little more than 24
square miles of land and has a population estimated at around 30,000 people. |
