Show discussion: Fort Boyard 2010 Grand Final

Well, all good things must come to an end – after twenty years and twenty-one seasons, it’s very very likely that this will be the last we’ll see of Fort Boyard (on France 2) for the forseeable future. It remains to be seen if they will still make the show for other countries who want to make it in future years, and if they do how much will they bother with new stuff?

But let us not mourn, let us celebrate tonight’s grand final – three great teams (including a team of four made up of people who played the game twenty years ago) vieing for the €40,000 top prize. They’ve already proven themselves, so it’s basically going to come down to which team has the better treasure collecting technique I expect.

Under few circumstances would I suggest this season has been better than the twenty traditional seasons that have gone before it, but looking at the success the two-team format has had in recent years in the rest of Europe I can totally understand why they choose to go down this path with their last roll of the dice. And having been refining it for a good six-seven years now, they’ve finally found a two-team format that feels convincing. It’s not perfect, but it does give something to work with.

I think it would make a good 60-minute Saturday early evening format for the BBC. This is by no means perfect, but I think I would do it a little bit like this:

• Ideally, eight-team knockout tournament.
• 60 minutes without adverts means I reckon you could fit in four rounds, a round consisting of one duel and two timed challenges.
• The teams would collect clues, but because of the extra round and to keep a bit of history, the first game they win would be for a key – effectively both teams begin on a -1 clue penalty.
• The duels can be whatever, as they are now. The timed challenges for rounds 1-3 are in the traditional cells of the fort. The challenge for round four would be an “EXTREME challenge” i.e. what you used to call an adventure. This is for some much needed progression.
• The winners of the duel get increasingly more power as the show progresses. There is no bonus in round one. In round two, the winning team is told what the next two games are and can select one for themselves. In round three, not only can they select but the losing team is obliged to win the key or become a prisoner. In round four (for the EXTREME challenge), the winning team gets to select the game AND forbid one player from the losing team from picking themselves to play, and both teams are obliged to win their challenge or lose a player. Hopefully this will go some way to alleviate the problem that the biggest strongest male plays most of the games.
• The riddles should be kept in some capacity, either one up in the watchtower (in which case, you need to employ someone for the watchtower) as a duel, or the other thing I came up with was the host asking a riddle before duels three, four and the treasure room and if any team gets two of them they win a bonus clue.
• Prisoners are kept in the dungeon using the current system – if a team takes more than one then the newest one replaces the oldest one. After the four rounds, the teams play the one table duel (inevitably the Holding the Weight game, because it’s probably the best one). The winning team gets their prisoner released, the losing team must have their prisoner Escape the Dungeon within the time limit or forfeit one of their clues. If neither team has a prisoner, then they can do the Crossbow Relay for a bonus.
• The treasure room I’m keeping as is, with the proviso that the gold is converted directly into money again, which the winning team can take home provided they’ve got the codeword correct. If both teams are wrong, then both leave with nothing but whoever collected the most gold at least gets to come back and have another go in the next stage. The winners of the grand final win a divisible by four bonus.
• Setting. This is difficult to get right, but the French show used to be quite good at being fantastical but without being embarrassing about it, and I certainly see no problem with trying to capture the imagination. In fact I think it’s needed. Turning the fort and its history into basically a jumped-up outward bound centre (regardless that that is what it actually is) as they have this year has hurt it, I think – sure, they’ve still got a 200 year-old man dispensing riddles and they still have people in tiger masks, but the roles this year have been basically lip service. A host playing it quite straight (as the French have proven, it doesn’t actually need someone Crystal Maze-esque eccentric, someone with a strong personality and a sense of authority would do nicely. “Welcome to me little holiday home!”) but with a production that hints at things happening beneath the surface would play quite well I reckon.
• Music is very important, and I’m *totally* putting the adventure music back on games they were designed for. New or remixed versions depending on what they are. Games where the music doesn’t provide a clear identity will be dealt with on a whim. 
• Obviously you would have to do the final at night, and double obviously there has to be a Champions vs Celebrities Christmas special. Obviously.

If I had to make a two team format, that is the way I would do it. I think.