Thanks to Greg for pointing this out in The Sun – ITV apparently considering a Crystal Maze revival with Amanda Holden hosting:
Oh look, it’s going to have celebrities in it. It’s the natural Japanification of British telly really, isn’t it?
Actually: edited to add an idle thought: what odds will someone give me that this is actually an evolution of the The Door format, based around bushticker trials ITV were suggesting during the last I’m a Celeb?
In other news, what was the big story of the weekend? Well for me it was the Total Wipeout Celeb Special – basically: Dominic Littlewood: who knew?
A contestant call for The Whole 19 Yards is up on UKGS.C. What I would suggest is, having seen the Spanish version, don’t get overly excited. Edit: It’s gone now, naughty Endemol researchers.
I bloody hope it ain’t Holden… she couldn’t present her way out of a paper bag.
When will ITV realise the public don’t like her?
Hmmm. I’m concerned about Holden. Nice to see ITV thinking about formats though.
Just saw this myself on the Digitalspy website. There’s a million better presenters than Amanda Holden. I hope ITV pick somebody else otherwise I don’t see myself watching this. Also, why is it that when a revival does happen, it’s ALWAYS celebs instead of Joe Public? Family Fortunes, Mr and Mrs, and now this.
Thankfully it sounds like as with The Cube it isn’t The Crystal Maze, but a rip off of it – because if the show is revived , I certainly don’t want her hosting it and certainly don’t want it to be another vehicle for the usual celebrity contestants.
About time the producers learned really as The Cube, Total Wipeout and Krypton Factor revival were surely the most successful new gameshows of 2009, and all based around real contestants too.
This is such a bad idea….
The Crystal Maze is such hallowed ground for us game show fans, and though I wouldn’t be averse to a remake, it would have to be done right…
Using Amanda Holden is clearly doing it wrong!
And whatever happened to that idea of having members of the public compete on a gameshow? All of a sudden the celebs are taking over (and not even decent ones at that!)
Only for some formats, and mainly for ITV.
I bet ITV Studios have an eye on building a set they can then hire out to international producers.
What they should do is build a castle or something in the middle of The Wash. They could call it Fort Amanda Holden, it would be tremendous.
What ever happened to that ‘contestants being chased through a maze flooding with water while being hunted’ format?
I HOPE it’s the mid-game of Fort Boyard 2010. Would be good.
Contestant call for The Whole 19 Yards now up on UKGS.
Ta. Stuff like this I’ll add to the Round-Up as and when I see it.
Oh dear. Please let this just be like the cube was likened to TCM.
I am also currently watching uk strongest man, no longer britains. Couldn’t help noticing one of the presentors were atlas and warrior from the recent gladiators. They are by no means natural, but it’s quite funny!
I believe UK’s SM and Britain’s SM are two seperate events, a bit like the darts.
I wondered who they were, but now you mention it it makes perfect sense. I thought they were just two chancers who looked like they were well into heavy metal.
Having followed the first series more adamantly (at the time no sky or virgin to actually watch it) i recognised the name of atlas (aka Sam Bond) before i recognised him. and it was only as i was posting on here that i realised it was warrior with him.
When they first came on screen though, i thought it was just two “not competeing this round” strongmen. They’re role is actually fairly redundant with Peter Dickinson and Agust Svensson doing most of the work.
Yes, it’s basically them going into and out of the breaks going “God, that was exciting wasn’t it? See you after the break!” and that’s it.
Goodness, how quickly the new Glads have been lost to the public conciousness. Poor them 🙁
Basically, the Scissor Sisters wrote a great song about the new Glads… I Don’t Feel Like Dan Singh.
Thanks, I’m here all week.
oh dear brig…
on other news(ish), these reply concentric rectangles are going to be interesting i think. enough replies to stuff and it’ll be squeezed into a very small horizontal space.
How long has that contestant call for “101 Ways To Leave A Game Show” been up on the BBC site? (In other words, I’ve only just noticed it but suspect I’m desperately behind the times in doing so.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/beonashow/brand_new_extreme_gameshow.shtml
Expect thrills and spills, heights and plunges, water, splashes and pure excitement – all filmed in an exciting location overseas!
So, not Cambridge then.
I still never found out where the old set for this was, despite living in the area.
No doubt this has been mentioned here before, but with all the Crystal Maze talk, I figured this might be worth (re)sharing. What appears to be every episode of CM on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/edtudorpole
im not sure it had been mentioned. but i was certainly aware. and duely downloaded each and every one, and now have the collection (reformed into whole episodes) on my ipod for those long train journeys.
Somebody on Digitalspy suggested Bill Bailey, though i would like Noel Fielding or Michael Underwood to present.
I expect many moans for Underwood but i think he could do very well with something like this after seeing his presenting on Jungle Run.
What on earth are they thinking even mentioning Amanda Holden in relation to The Crystal Maze.
The news item on Galaxy this morning made the shows return sound like a done deal, even mentioning the return of the 4 zones and the dome.
This has generated quite a buzz more so than the return of Krypton or Gladiators ever did so ITV would be stupid not to go for it now.
The contestant call for The Whole 19 Yards has been removed. Sneaky buggers pulled a fast one and ran off without paying…
Oh dear, I hope that’s not my fault…
This is a bit funny- it shows how the genre exploded the past 10 years….(and this isn’t a full list!)
http://www.theawl.com/2010/01/the-end-of-the-00s-listicle-without-commentary-the-348-best-reality-television-shows-of-the-00s-in-order-by-jon-caramanica
Hmmm.. The smell of fresh electronic paint around here. Nice.
Anyway curiously enough.. during a quiet period over Chrimble (OK, 6.09am Christmas Day to be precise flicking though the Sky EPG and seeing a repeat was due to be shown – I was up that early due to pain given by acute tonsillitus that I contracted the weekend before, and the antibiotics not kicking yet by that stage – but I wander off topic…) I reformatted in my head The Crystal Maze, and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn Holden was not even on the list of ‘not a chance’ of presenters.
Thus, for those interested..
Ditch the zones but keep the mental/physical/skill/mystery challenges all played by a team of 5 people. No time limits per game, but the team has a total time of 50 mins – clock doesn’t stop for anything (I was thinking more about a BBC revival than an ITV one)
Lock in’s are only for Skill challenges, where the player runs out of balls/buckets of water and/or touches the floor/walls/celing 3 times or runs out of lifes whilst playing the game. Like the old days a Crystal is sacrificed to buy the player back out.
No Crystal Dome as such – this is replaced by a quickfire question chamber where each player goes at least once during the 50 mins at random intervals when prompted by the presenter – this can also be used to stop the dominant shouters of advice in the group, or the quiet ones who spend the time looking at the set rather than what’s going on. Each question answered correctly in the dome wins £100 for the team pot – wrong answers deduct 10 seconds from the time at the start of the next game.
Crystals are worth £1,000. End of the 50 mins Crystals won + Dome correct answers totals added together and devided equally amougst the team.
Proposed Maze Presenter – John Barrowman (I know a couple of weeks back I flagged him up as a Fort Boyard presenter, but I actually think he’d be quite good and could have the O’Brien sarcasam which Eddy TP didn’t).
For those concerned – my tonsils are now free of infection – but it did ruin Christmas somewhat – even more than finding out the only passable thing to watch some evenings was Heads Or Tails.
not bad. it sounds a good show. i’d certainly watch it BUT… if you brought this out as the crystal maze, i would be hunting you down with some sort of blunt object. It varies too far from it.
but as a separate show, i like.
Right, and in the Crystal Dome question chamber I should point out, each player has 10 questions fired at them by some Orwellian 1984-esque booming voice.
Memo to self for the new year – re-read posting and check for important missing details before lunging at the ‘submit comment’ button…
Loving ‘deja vu’ appearing twice in the Missing Vowels round, there.
Also it lasted a bloody long time, didn’t it?
Presumably due to the rest of the show being pretty pacy.
I don’t remember the Greek letter cards glowing quite so much after selection in the past. Is that new or have I just not been paying attention?
Missing Vowels is backtimed to be whatever length it needs to be, within limits of 90 to 180 seconds.
If the teams get lots of questions right in rounds 1 and 2, or get the walls quickly, it cuts out a lot of explanation time and leaves us light for Missing Vowels.
Oh yes, one of the few times I’ve fallen on my side laughing when watching a serious quiz…
I did enjoy Only Connect – particularly the déj&agrace; vu gag – and found the question difficulty to be, well, spot on for a first round match. However, I looked away at the crucial moment and didn’t see who wrote the questions. (!!! It’s a crucial moment to me.) Any familiar names?
Also: Iain, are you still read-only or can you contribute to Bar banter now?
Nuts! There is no “delete your previous comment” option. I know how to spell “grave”, honest.
The additional questions were by Justin Scroggie and ‘Smylers’ (Google him).
Read-Only? I’ve only knowingly banned two people in the past, and I’m pretty sure Iain wasn’t one of them! Not deliberately, at any rate.
No, not suggesting that – technical issue at his end. He’s very busy at the moment so may not get the chance to respon even if the tech is working, though.
respon…
..d.
It occurs to me that the economics of making a big adventure show like The Crystal Maze have probably changed favourably with the advent of Challenge – or, perhaps, multi-channel television in general. It occurs to me that a suitably impressive show (that, crucially, is never going to go out of date like a topical quiz) might be able to bank on years of repeat fees to come – or, if it’s an in-house production, a broadcaster might be able to think of spending millions of quid on not just a single series but a single series with the potential to be repeated five, ten or twenty times.
I believe it’s true that Challenge TV paid more for Crystal Maze in repeat fees than the original series cost because they repeated it over 35 times.
The cost of the maze is not as much as people might think it to be. What costs time is to do it to a deadline. If it could be built over time at a more leisurely pace, it wouldn’t cost that much. I also wonder to what extent virtual reality and/or projections could bring some of the costs down.
I noticed last time I saw CM on Challenge they’ve cut a game out to put an ad break in! Sacriledge.
Really? How do you know? Later series had fewer games than earlier ones (13 versus 15).
Simple, because old series went 4, 4, 3 and 4, later series went 3, 3, 4, and 3, and a recent repeat on Challenge went 3, 3, 3 and 3 and had an extra ad break.
If you haven’t gathered already, there is a limit of five levels of reply. I can increase it if necessary, but it’s probably easier just to go off the final bit like what I’m doing here.
I don’t think it’s repeat fees which would make it worth while, but the prospect of hiring the set out to international broadcasters to film their own versions, rather than each building their own set. I guess in many ways Fort Boyard was ahead of the times when it came to doing that.
On the wider point of the Amanda Holden story, I will say this: I don’t think it’s true. What’s probably happening is one of two things:
1) Her agent has made some story up to keep her in the press. It’s happened before.
2) More likely, ITV are developing a shiny-floor show with Crystal Maze-like games, which I suppose its feasible Holden might co-host.
I doubt TCM will ever appear on ITV. Two main reasons – for all its popularity, it was only ever a cult show; and secondly ITV now have The Cube which I see as being much more like the kind of thing an ITV viewer would watch.
That said, if ever there was to be a comeback, ITV would be the only logical channel that had a budget and remit large enough to take it on.
I’m not sure ITV would be the only ones. Channel Five have shown the desire to have spectacle game shows, and with Richard Woolf in charge of programming, who i have been led to believe was the main mover who got Sky to bring back gladiators. Whilst we are on sky, i doubt they would be interested in TCM, they prefer your glitzyier studio based show.
Unlike Sky, channel 4 have never really had the remit for glitzy (which is why i was suprised they were involved with the cube at an early stage.) But channel 4 appear to not bring back old shows, so a channel 4 reunion seems unlikely.
And as you say David, TCM is surely far too cult for itv. Which leaves us with the bbc. who i could ‘maybe’ see bringing it back. But were they too, id imagine it in a childrens format, probably running in a post final score saturday slot. but who knows.
as for hosts, not amanda. I dont hate her, but whoever decided this was a good deserves to be shot at first dawn. not that i am keen on the often rumoured russell brand or noel fielding.
personnally i dont think it should be a regular television presenter/personality. Obviously first choice is to see if richard would return, then i would see if there was any chance robbie williams would fancy it, then back to Ed tudor pole, and then someone give the agent of adam ant a ring to see what he’s doing.
What about BBC3, with a repeat showing on BBC2?
David, didn’t you suggest a wee while ago that the Chatsworth empire no longer exists? If so, (a) who owns the The Crystal Maze format these days and (b) to whom do Challenge pay the repeat fees these days?
My absolute gut feeling about any TCM remake is that you have to keep it as faithful to the original as possible and then make “improvements” once people have decided they like it.
My gut feeling on a TCM remake is you’d need to keep the concept of crystals earning time in an end game won via games, lock ins and ‘zones’ (I’d stick to four but three could conceivably work )… My gut feeling is also that collecting tokens blowing around a giant pentakis dodecahedron in the end game wouldn’t work for a modern audience, although I’m not entirely sure what you could do instead without losing the ‘feel.’
I think it would, because it’s The Crystal Dome – the focal point of the show. You change it, you’ll lose everyone who grew up with it or watched it on Challenge.
The interesting thing is that I don’t think it would work with celebrities. If it’s being played for charity, presumably, more teams would have to win, but if you make it too easy it’s pointless.
Oh, you shouldn’t get rid of the dome as focal point, yes – I’m just not entirely convinced jumping around grabbing fans makes for good viewing. And am at sufficient loss as to what could replace jumping around grabbing fans without over complicating things or turning it into Not The Crystal Maze that I’d probably use jumping around grabbing fans anyway.
If you drop too many elements from The Crystal Maze, at some point it just turns into The Adventure Game. Which may be a better bet for a revival anyway.
Or wind up with something new within the Crystal Maze genre.
Just saw this on Twitter – live photo of Wipeout series three being edited. Doesn’t give much away but it looks very… different.
http://twitpic.com/wor2h
interesting…
but with the clock in the bottom right at 0:00, you can presume its either a walk up to the start of the wipeout zone (its night time from just behind the contestant) or some sort of treadmill start to it.
It looks like a treadmill… but going which way?
They’ve said they wanted to go in a slightly new direction with the third series – looks a bit sci-fi.
Loving the new look Bother’s Bar!
Anyway, University Challenge resumed tonight after another brief Christmas interlude, with the first match in the new partly-Australian-Rules-Football-Finals-style quarter-final stage, which Paxo explained as simply as he could.
In all fairness, Girton Cambridge were some bit fortunate in reaching this stage, requiring a late flurry of starters to beat Nottingham and then scraping past St George’s London after having put 100 points on the board before the medics had even troubled their buzzers. On the other hand, St John’s Oxford had been extremely impressive, tonking Durham and then holding off a charging Loughborough in a high-scoring affair.
Thus, a St John’s win was odds-on, and so it was to prove – after the first four starters were shared, the Oxford side drew right away, and it was clear as early as the music round that there was only going to be one winner. That music round was perhaps the highlight of the match, as St John’s got many laughing while struggling to identify the bands behind 1960s instrumentals, and what might Mick Fleetwood and co think of “Albatross” simply being called “that song from the M&S ad”?
Such was St John’s dominance, though, that Girton found themselves stuck on 25 between the two picture rounds. They got themselves up to 55 by the end, but this equalled the lowest score of the series so far, while the Oxford side’s 280 equalled the highest.
So, St John’s will be appearing at least twice more, with a semi-final berth very likely, and a bet on them being champions would be a good one, though the likes of Emmanuel Cambridge might have other ideas.
Really Useless Fact: Not one but two questions tonight included a mention of a blue copper-containing substance.
And Paxo seems to have made no attempt at hiding his contempt for the reformatting of the quarter finals. Although he doesn’t seem to hold it in as much in contempt as when he was asked to read the weather as part of Newsnight.
(The only mystery to me, though, is “Who on earth decided the best way to extend the format by however many episodes this adds on would be to do a double elimination tournament structure for the quarter finals only?”)
Well my guess is that it was a joint decision by the Beeb and Granada (trying to call themselves ITV just isn’t going to work) to extend the tournament in this way, though how exactly this decision came about I do not know. It could have been to do with events during last year’s epic series, or that they felt that late February was too early for a series to be finishing, or both. There could have been other reasons, of course.
I’m still not really gone on the series starting in the height of summer, though.
So, anyone going to attempt an explanation?
Essentially: The quarter finals are being run as a double elimination sub tournament with eight contestants ending when only four remain rather than someone wins that tournament.
In essence, a truncated form of http://www.tournamentdesign.org/td/basic2e8p.pdf but where the game five and game six winners play the Game 7 and Game 8 losers, and the four surviving teams from the sub-tournament go on to a single elimination semi final.
I think.
Was thinking about the Insured Success game show that we were discussing before the switch and whose name I would never be able to get right in its original language if I tried… What if it were a multiplayer game? Two or three contestants all start out with the million euro. And while I’d hate to make thie entire thing turn into Twenty-One, we’d put them into soundproof booths. The contestants are unaware of each other’s progress and play independently, but by the rule that whoever has more money left gets to play (even if this means one person gets several questions in a row), and only the first to answer the seven questions (or maybe curb it back to five) wins. That’d make for some more dramatic wins (or losses) as contestants would then try to keep as much money as they could in the game, or if they had to sacrifice some money, they’d have to predict what their opponent has left so they could stay on top of it.