Alright, we gave the one-off a sort of free pass when we realised they were filming it at The Experience, no such luck with this though, Channel 4 have revealed that The Crystal Maze is indeed coming back, and as suggested a few weeks ago will indeed be filming in Bristol. In fact it’ll be at The Bottleyard, where Deal or No Deal lived.
Digital Spy reporting that twenty hour-long episodes have been commissioned (that’s a lot!) and that Richard Ayoade is set to host. we’ll be very interested to see what sort of tone this sets for the show, we enjoyed Stephen Merchant hosting but there’s no way the style would have sustained a full series. Also we’re hoping for more than ten games an episode. And how many different games will they have across the series?
Anyway, don’t stuff it up.
Edit: Good start, James Dillon who designed the original set is doing this one as well. And it looks like it’ll be teams of five.
Richard Ayoade wasn’t a name I considered, but he’s exactly the right *sort* of host; quirky enough, serious enough when necessary. Just needs to nail the tone…
Interesting choice of host, Channel 4 – I think Mr Ayoade will have enough respect for the format to do it justice whilst at the same time bringing his own traits to the table. I’m looking forward to this!
How big was the original set? The press release also seems to suggest a few of the 20 run will be more celebrity ones for Stand Up To Cancer
It’s been suggested that 30k ft is bigger than the first series set at Shepperton, not quite as big as the Aces High Hangar. But I don’t know exact numbers.
IIRC, the original set was often quoted as “two football pitches” but in actual fact it was closer to one. A small football pitch is 45,000 sq ft.
So it’s probably a little smaller than the original but in the right kind of ballpark.
Given ad breaks are longer these days and there’s likely to be a little lower game count in the newer series, it might be tempting to put only 4 or 5 chambers in a zone? That would help with set size.
Quite possibly.
The original started with 15 (4, 4, 3, 4) and episode and went down to 13 (3, 3, 4, 3). I’d be disappointed if they just played ten like on the SUTC special. I think at that point you might have to inflate the value of a crystal.
Considering ad breaks and such, I’d hope they try for 12 at least (3/3/3/3)- any more than that is gravy IMO…
Yeah, twelve would be my realistic ideal.
the order makes me think that this is basically a two-series commitment; 10 eps later this year, 10 eps early in 2018.
As to how they format it- you think they might try and do some games with a 1:30 time limit? That would let them get a couple more games in if they mix it up with 2:00 and 2:30 games- and maybe 1 3:00 game an ep. If they do only 10 games, I might think they would give them a larger “activation crystal” that starts the fans- it gives them (say) 10 seconds guaranteed, and it can’t be used to release a locked-in player..
MEANWHILE Release the Hounds: Famouns the Freaked, the show everybody is just going to call Celebrity Release the Hounds starts in February:
One thing, will the new Crystal Maze series be eligible for the Poll of the Year 2017? It was commissioned because of the celebrity pilot, but seems it will be quite different.
On the basis of previous shows that have done this ANNOYING thing, yes I think so.
CBBC’s Top Class returns on January 25 at 17:00.
Yay!
Loved this when it was on last year!
Just finished watching an episode of ‘Rate mal, wie alt ich bin’ on Das Erste. Not sure if this has been discussed here. A team of two work their way through 7 people, guessing how old they are. For such a boring sounding idea, it actually worked quite well, with the addition of extra clues you can choose to help you out such as being given a song from their year of birth, or a chance to inspect them up closer!
Interesting scoring / money system too.
Haven’t watched it yet, but Guess My Age (which I presume this is) seems to be selling to a lot of places right now.
I thought about bringing it up, but couldn’t motivate myself.
I think the studio is not functional enough (e.g. I don’t see why the stage has towards the contestants for the magnifying glass clue). And I feel it’s rude guessing the age sometimes. On the other hand I have watched it four times while doing stuff for uni so it seems to suit the “we’re having dinner while the telly’s on”-slot very well. And it has a great guess along factor.
I probably don’t like it, because I think we should have had a German format tried there and not some safe import. Because it’s nothing spectacular you couldn’t invent yourself.
I just like saying “The Bristol Maze”.
We do already have The Bristol (data) Dome
12 games should be possibly – basically losing a game covers the extra ad break compared to the 90s. Celeb specials of most shows tend to pad out the chat so 10 games for those is fair enough.
If they do only 2 minutes interview only they can get a 12 game 60 seconds in the dome. If they can’t get 12 games they need to introduce a double up gamble. Whereas when they want they can ask to use a 10sec Crystal but won’t know what’s in the room. They can only use it once and if they fail then they miss out
Actually they mention 20x60mins but they don’t say if it excludes adverts. They might be doing a GBBO whereas they won’t lose any of the original hour so makes the programme longer than its original 60 mins BBC version
When they commissioned The Question Jury, they commissioned 20×60 episodes, and it turned out 60 minutes included adverts. I suspect the same case here.
A 60 Slot show with no adverts still wouldn’t actually be 60 minutes long since you have continuity and interstitials to fit around it.
At our place if we referred to a programme as a 60; it would undoubtedly mean a 60 Slot; with a runtime of around 45’40” on a digital channel’ 46’40” on network.
For comparison, there’s a video of (a FTN repeat of) the first episode of The Crystal Maze up on YouTube and that times in at 52’23”. The way the adverts have been edited out is fine. Theoretically the original might have been a shade longer still if FTN had edited things out to fit their hour, but it doesn’t seem likely.
52’20” to 46’40”! Just keep telling yourself, it’s better than nothing, it’s better than nothing, it’s better than nothing…
Applications have gone live for the new series however this time instead of applying individually and being paired up at the recording, this time you need a team of six (5 actual contestants 1 reserve) before you submit your application
I just spotted that as well – teams of 5 (as in the celebrity special) would tie in with the suggestion made earlier about reducing the number of games played – 10 during the extended celebrity special was far too few.
I’m not sure I like the idea of the team being completely pre-made (5 people who know each other, with designated team captain and vice captain). One of the positives of the original was the journey the team took together from the beginning and either discovering new talents or making a complete fool of themselves… I suspect a lot of that will be lost on camera if everyone already knows each other.
Or – hoping for some pre-constructed tension and arguments within the team dynamic.
Monica:-
“Paul, I said you had 15 seconds to get out – you moron. Why you leave it so late? Car’nt ave you locked in”
Paul:-
“Urggh – moan, moan, moan all you ever do”
That said, with getting a group of 5 who already know each other should correct that other (untalked about) issue with earlier Crystal Mazes. When soldering the teams together – it did seem like most of the contestants did appear to have either physical/teaching or middle management desk jobs, and came not too far either side of the M25 boundary.