So here’s some Fort Boyard news: Olivier Minne will still be hosting on his own despite the return to the more classic format, and as well as originally suggesting they are going to do the whole thing as live, a nighttime element will return. Exciting. One of the new characters is a combination of Lara Croft and a wrestler, and another new possibly virtual character is set to explain the new hi-tech games, apparently. I can’t wait to see how this ends up. Hopefully they don’t do something really stupid like use virtual keys, clues and clepsydres. Source: Fan-fortboyard.fr
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Maybe Olivier is now going to do the role usually taken up by Anne-Gaelle, and this large screen business explains the games in a Minute to Win It stylee. I don’t know.
I’m got a suspicion Kinect technology might be used at some point…
Professional game show creator, Paul Brassey, has said on Twitter that he expects Sing if You Can to be a big success. I agree with him for once.
Brassey is speaking very highly of the show, praising Leigh Francis and calling him the “new Harry Hill” who will be “loved by kids”.
A very high recommendation from the creator of smash hit Sky gameshow League of Their Own.
We shall see. Do you want to bet?
I don’t bet, I believe it can send you down the slippery slope.
Seeing what Endemol/Talpa likes to ask of its contestants I find that quite fascinating.
Alright, don’t think of it as betting, think of it as having sincere confidence in your own beliefs. It’s you, edgy media professional Joe Associated With Endemol versus me, a man in a bedsit with a page that gets about 800 hits a day. COME ON!
If you are worried I will by necessity find out who you are you can rest assured that anything told in confidence has stayed in confidence, but anything I work out is fair game, and also that it is less fascinating than it sounds.
Well, Casino gambling pretty much revolves around The Skinner Box (uncertain reward for action), if that’s what you mean, but that sort of thing only leads to addiction in people with a psychological tendency towards addiction…
…I presume it applies to non-casino gambling as well…
and the creator of the colour of money…
Now now, let’s not bring that up. 😉
IMO a strong host can make an average show watchable, which this sounds like at best. It will be interesting to see how Leigh Francis AKA Keith lemon does with a more family friendly show.
Norway fort boyard have just finshed what i would call a very successful series.
Im getting worried on the french version of 2011. I read that the live element wont be happening and instead its gonna be set over a 24 hour period. i hope this “high tech” buisness will be during “night” element and not on the key/clue games
Eh, I dunno. There is a fair bit you can do with ‘high tech’ that you can’t really do without (c.f. the invisible maze game in The Crystal Maze)
Indeed, I’m hopeful they’ll add an interesting new element.
Actually, that reminds me of something I always wondered about that; if I remember right, you were allowed to hit three walls or you had an automatic lock-in, and collecting the crystal removed the walls?
Would it have been permitted to use one mistake to jump a wall? I’m dimly aware there were rules we never actually saw to legitimise the games, but that strikes me as clever use of tactics rather than necessarily trivialising the game (you still had to get to a spot where hitting one wall would still keep you safe and get you to the crystal.)
And considering Fort Boyard, traditionally, hasn’t had ‘artificial’ rules outside of what aparatus they choose to provide or otherwise, while the Crystal Maze did (The very notion of ‘three mistakes and you’re locked in’ and ‘don’t touch the floor’
Meaning in FB you’d need to link the walls to a portcullis or something.
Alongside Wipeout Canada (which btw, is just Wipeout UK-esque out-of-dateness combined with an USA-style on-air presence), TVtropolis also picked up a new original called Instant Cash.
Basically, think Born Lucky (game show that travels to malls) meets Cash Cab, as you, the randomly selected member of the public, answer timed multiple-choice questions and complete dares (as hosted by a glitzy looking talking ATM machine) to win up to *gasp* $15,000!
Oh that’s interesting, I saw a promo for that the other week. It’s very difficult for things not filmed in a proper studio not to feel a bit cheap and insignificant these days, which is probably a bit unfair (it didn’t stop Cash Cab from being mildly popular and successful) but there we are.
“randomly selected member of the public” eh?
http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/tor/tfr/2291317696.html
You’ll understand why I wasn’t allowed to apply. Also, they filmed several bits at the mall near my house.
Hmmm I’m worried about this. It would seem to me that the French are trying too hard…?
I would much rather they stuck to the two team race to win keys and the winning team enter the treasure room. Sort of mix the classic format with two teams?
I personally never liked the night time sections and always found them tedious and boring.
The simpler the format of the show, the better and more successful I think it will be?
Well they kind of have to, the audience has been disapparing (I’m actually massively surprised it’s getting another series after last year’s ratings disaster). Partly I think this is a quality issue (2005 was the last proper quality vintage I think), partly because the show is twenty years old – but there is no way the show would have lasted as long as it has if the only new things they did were five new tests every season, everybody would have got bored long ago.
The fort at night is brilliant, the tasks used less so.
The problem, compared to The Crystal Maze anyway, seemed to me to be ‘not enough game variety’ (I mean, what, the Crystal Maze had… 20-30 new games per season, maybe a couple of games similar to previous ones but no straight repeats, outside of Mumsy compared to Fort Boyard’s ‘a couple new key games and tests each year but mostly repeats’)
Mmm. I think The Crystal Maze could have run for much longer than the six years it did run for – change a zone every so often and it had, what, 50 new games a year? Easy enough to keep it interesting.
Fort Boyard doesn’t have the luxury, it’s a proper building and through one reason or another has spent twenty years limiting itself on the sorts of tests it can create (physical and involving lots of metal). That’s why I’m finding some of the ideas put forward quite exciting – if it falls on its face then it’s not as if it was likely to get another year anyway, but if its successful it opens up a lot of possibilities for the future. Whatsmore if it dies in France where you’d have to presume the largest amount of money comes from, it probably dies elsewhere as well.
I do not think it’s impossible to keep the feel of the show whilst simultaneously modernising it in a good way.
The reason why TCM was cancelled wasn’t lack of variety – it was the demographics. By the end, something approaching 50% of the audience were under 18. So essentially Channel 4 were making a very, very expensive children’s programme. Even though the ratings were great, they found it hard to justify the cost of continuing.
For the record, it was 50 new games per year.
Does there come a point at which all the 9- and 13- year olds who loved the show in the early ’90s become the hip and moneyed 29- and 33- year olds in the early ’10s that advertisers might crave, or does the continued run of the show on Challenge mean that it’s a revival that people would smile at but not particularly need unless the new version were somehow clearly to far exceed the very high bar set by the old one? The Cube is clearly a very different show, but it’ll scratch, or have scratched, the itch for some viewers.
This is probably a FAQ, I suppose.
I think if you could get a host that had a ready-built audience to take with him/her to the new show, it could very well work. I could quite easily see it working with Russell Brand, given that he has a certain fanbase, cult status (for good or bad) and the necessary “unhingedness” that made it work with RO’B.
I also think you’d probably have to up the danger factor and scale of the games somewhat, taking it a bit closer to Boyard but probably without the “ooh, tarantulas!” element. And the game would also need a bit of a tweak because by halfway you’d know whether a team would be likely to win or not.
This is all rather academic because there’s no current UK channel that would bring it back anyway.
To be honest, Boyard isn’t extreme by most standards these days anyway. I also think you’re underselling The Crystal Maze as a format here, I don’t think thevaudience were too bothered if it looked like a team was going to win or not, and The Crystal Dome was secretly a bit rubbish, but it was visually impressive and iconic.
Yes I totally understand, not saying it was only that it would still have been getting good ratings had it continued – in many ways Fort Boyard has the same problem with the demographic, only they don’t seem to see it as a problem in France (probably because there are no ad breaks).