We’re three episodes into The Traitors and it’s as entertaining as it ever is, we’re three missions in and they’ve done a bold thing of tying them into the game a bit more – one involving the Traitors having to sabotage in order to murder which is a great added frisson except the producers will contrive to have five people for the final anyway so actually completely pointless – you’ve tried to solve jank with jank! But more irritatingly, the other two have both involved self-sacrifice – who will knock themselves out – or be convinced to knock themselves out – so that everybody else will live and possibly earn money?

This comes off the back of current Amazon non-hit Beast Games where it feels like 80% of the challenges are self-sacrificing ones. Who will knock themselves out for money? Who will knock themselves out for no money but for other people to survive? Who will knock themselves out for money whilst also knocking out other people who will win nothing? Who will give their coin to someone else who might give you a helicopter ticket but if not enough people do nobody goes to an island? It feels like every possible combination of the self-sacrifice formula has been played out to death and there have only been four episodes so far.

I’m over it. There is absolutely a time and place for the drama of it, but even Squid Game: The Challenge understood its power is in using it moderately and with an element of risk/reward. As it is, as TV challenge design it’s just become very tired, very lazy, very quickly. Where’s the range gone? Ultimately we want winners who have strived for something, not just fell into a good place because they they don’t want it the least.

Alright let’s get this bit out of the way – you need a VPN and you need to sign up for a TF1 account – you should be able to figure out how to do the latter, it doesn’t ask for an address but it will ask for a ZIP Code, 75000 for Paris will do. Here’s the direct show page.

And this is an interesting prospect, this isn’t a revival for the French, they never had their own version in the 90s, which may explain why the opening episodes tanked a bit against the extremely popular Death in Paradise last night. They have looked to us for inspiration – in fact they’ve copied our stylings pretty much wholesale, same theme (in English!), same titles, practically the same set (it’s filmed in the ice-rink in Pergy rather than Sheffield, but it’s got all the lights and screens and pizazz), though there is rather a strange mix of fonts – our long and thin one used for most of the event graphics, and a sort of He-Man inspired thick font going around the screens and for their explanation graphics. They’ve even got the locker room cameras for post-game Glad chat.

The Gladiators themselves are great fun in the main (and let’s be honest, extremely attractive) – Apollo is their version’s Legend, constantly playing up to the crowd. Furie’s a curious one, comes across as petulant and childlike when I was expecting her to blow up (hence Fury). But even without French you can quickly work out their personalities. The audience don’t have Glad Hands but have been given giant cardboard faces of the contestants and Gladiators to wave about.

Being a French show the tournament set-up is, of course, weird. Each episode is actually a set of two episodes around 70 minutes each (or rather, as has been pointed out, one episode cut in half so they can claim better ratings for one of them). At the end of the second episode, the two male and two female winning Eliminator times are compared, and only the faster one goes through to the final, like an instant-run-off second round. I hope the actual Final doesn’t work like that as that’s going to feel like a massive anti-climax. Each match is four games and an Eliminator. If that sounds drawn out, yes it is a bit, although I didn’t feel it as much as I could have.

Of the games there have been some unusual choices made – Duel is only twenty seconds and takes longer to explain than to play, The Edge called Vertigo here is 40 seconds (but still 3pts a crossing 18pts maximum, turns out 40 seconds is still more than enough time). Course Poursuite aka The Wall is a ten metre wall off to the side of the Arena not next to the doors, and I’m not saying it’s easy but one of the guys got up there in 10 seconds. Also they don’t have to get up and over, just hit a buzzer. More positively, Passenge en Force aka Gauntlet didn’t feel like a walkover – 14m and four Glads and the contestants were given a bit of trouble – whether this is better Gladiating or what feels like a less wide pipe I don’t know. Curiously the French will be using events we aren’t using – in the previews it looks like Whiplash, Suspension Bridge, Tug of War (very old school) and Earthquake are all still to come.

However there’s a lack of killer instinct in the production and the editing. There’s no in game music – even if ours is a disappointment compared to the 90s original it still helps drive the action, there are some countdown horns ticking off the last five seconds of a game but that’s it. Most of The Edge is a static side on shot of the grid with the occasional cutaway, didn’t feel very dynamic. No real attempt to make Duel look like it wasn’t happening about two feet off the ground. Using Another One Bites The Dust for every Gladiator win and Stayin’ Alive for every contender win gets quite old quite quickly. And one other weird thing is that when one challenger has completed the Eliminator, they’re not especially bothered if the loser completes it or not, which doesn’t sound like a big thing but having the loser at least complete the course is part of where the soul of Glads comes from. And going to a break to advertise the viewer competition during the Eliminator is a bit rude, frankly.

So overall: a bit weird. Not bad, and without having nostalgia driving it they’ve certainly tried. Normally when the French do their adaptations you can understand why they’ve changed things and sometimes I can agree with them, I can’t quite see why they’ve done certain things here.

It is of course giving, and our current favourite Youtube channel MisterDoc has been uploading some incredible finds recently – the first ever You Bet! Various interesting Krypton Factor specials, and we can’t wait to see this sometime over Christmas, the first (of apparently many!) episodes of Body Heat – the 90s Mike Smith physical gameshow some of us have been looking for for years and which amazingly hasn’t made it to Youtube other than one short clip. The vid goes live Xmas Day at 6pm.

We’ve often joked about pitching Million Pound Bleep Test as an idea, I can’t remember if it was in this first series – I enjoyed the more extended later shows which I also think had a great final round, the first series finished on a straight batak wall which was fun enough, the later ones finished on the Tri-Batak where you had a time limit to complete three challenges *before* you used the rest of the time to earn points on the batak wall, which I always thought was quite a fun mechanic.