Saturdays from July 11th,
8pm UK/9pm France
France 2 and hopefully Youtube
This ought to be an intriguing year for the show – the 31st season (and actual 30th birthday), and filmed under COVID conditions – facemasks at the relevant times and teams are reduced to five (from six) and they’ll stay outside the Treasure Room with Passe-Partout taxi-ing relevant players to relevant tests – not unlike how they did the bonus tasks on Toujours plus Fort! last year (which is also back for post-adventure entertainment after eight of the eleven episodes this year).
But they’re promising this won’t be a wasted year, there only seem to be a couple of new tests and adventures (that have been revealed to the press anyway) but they’ve gone big on the side events to freshen it up. There are the new Boos (Big and Little to go alongside Lady Boo), Willy Rovelli’s restaurant has been shut down in retaliation for opening Boyard Land without asking Pere Fouras first so he’s opened a speakeasy and changed the nature of Willymix, Cyril Gossbo is a new Ken doll-like character representing “the perfect gameshow host”, played by regular celeb contestant and ex-FB intern Cyril Ferraud, and the Boyard Academy has opened for remedial lessons as everyone’s missed school for months under the tutelage of comic Kevin Raze, who unfortunately is the laziest professor ever.
So plenty of surprises in store, hopefully it will still be a good watch even under the difficult recording cirumstances.
To watch live outside of France you will need a VPN. The last few years production have put up the full episodes on Youtube ungeoblocked soon after broadcast on the official channel, but there’s no guarantee they’ll do the same this year.
Ratings down due to a football game.
2,255,000 or 11.6% Audience share.
*ESCAPE GAME* Fort Boyard looks to be on sale on both NA and UK eShops, as well as Steam.
(And the first one looks like it’s on a bigger sale in the UK eShop, but not Steam)
…
Still way more expensive that I’d put down for it though.
Also, not sure if maybe it’s just cause they didn’t do region-free Youtube uploads this year and I haven’t been bothered to hunt down uploads, or just the eps I did watch were just ‘eh’, or maybe with the off-season Boyardland I’m just “Boyard-ed out’ but I think I only ended up seeing 2–3 episodes this year, and I’m pretty alright with that.
I watched the first six, enjoyed them well enough but it just feels too compromised to give over three straight hours to watch and I haven’t caught up with the rest. Might catch up on this one if it’s the last in the series though.
I think this year really pinpointed something in the format for me. It’s sort of been heading this way the past couple years, but this year especially with the “seats” in front of the treasure room, it just really feels like Fort Boyard’s become “A talk/variety show where they play some games” rather than “An adventure”. And when I came here for the latter, and couldn’t give much of a care to watching a French talk show, well…
While it hasn’t been much of an issue in the previous years to me i feel the pacing of the show really suffered this year. Like there a nice flow of key games and then the cage comes and slows it all down. There then a chef willy competition before we have 2-3 More key games. Judgement and Willymix slow it down even more. Then we have 4 clue games that feel good then back to slow Chef Willy and Council (Thats just a tad bit slower).
I get they had to make changes but they could have done alot better with the editing.
Just watching the final episode now.
Thoughts:
* Yes, it’s not been a classic series and the pandemic has *really* exposed some flaws. However, it’s not all bad. Even games like Tata Fouras which I know people hate aren’t *terrible*, although there’s been some pretty rough falls the past two weeks.
* Very interesting that this week was the first one recorded, and the last aired. I think this proves that Olivier’s pre-team intros are all recorded at the same time.
* Next year probably needs to be a year of change if there’s no restrictions by then – WillyMix/ChilliStyx needs to go, cause it’s just too..jarring. They need to increase the number of games played again – yes, it’s obviously so Delphine has *something* to do, but this year they’ve fluctuated between 10-12 attempts to win 8 keys + 3 games in the Cage, where the average this series is 0.91 keys won per set of cage games.
* Speaking of the Cage, that NEEDS to go now. It was a great idea giving it to the Boos, but it’s just too disjointed and – although it’s better than seeing children be beaten in the games – it’s still far too broken game-wise. No-one is going to beat Laura Mete in endurance challenges, no-one is going to beat Casey in any game he was known for when he was a Cage child. Big Boo has lost six of the keys, Casey three and Lady Boo just one all series. It’s really not worth wasting ten+ minutes of the show for teams to win one key. Last year – it was 14/33 won. This year, it’s 10/33.
* Speaking of ten+ minutes, THESE GAMES ARE SO. SLOW. Any game now takes five minutes off the clock unless it’s a quick win/loss, almost all the games with characters hosting them now take seven, and last week’s Slaime took nine minutes off. That’s ridiculous when the clock is officially 50 minutes.
* Now the good bits – I suspect Slaime will stay until Cyril decides not to do it anymore, Tata Fouras isn’t *terrible*, Boyard Academy has a welcome return (although we were still robbed of a new bit of brilliance intro-wise from Narcisse), the new version of Magik is much better (although I still argue that it could be run without Magik himself, therefore saving enough time for another game easily and also not being nearly as irritating) and Willy’s Speakeasy has given a new lease of life to the Restaurant game, despite their best efforts presentation-wise. I’d be perfectly happy with the Speakeasy being hidden behind one adventure they were going to take out a season and the cell(s) where the Restaurant currently is having a brand new game next year.
* Now, the not so good – WillyMix as I mentioned is pointless anyway cause I think the joker was only used once or twice this season. They either need to come up with a better reward for not using it (like another clue game or extra money for example), bin it off completely (and save 10-15 minutes per episode) or add a penalty to using it, like the person who gets subbed in has to win or they become prisoner. Basically, the joker idea needs some stakes because at the moment it’s a damp squib of a twist. Araignée is an awful game (sorry Lee!) and has been for years, and I hope they finally see sense and bin it off. It also doesn’t help how much it’s been played this year – we had a run of six episodes I think where it was played either in the main show or TPF. Bibliotheque Abandonée has served its time for me too, as has Croco World. I’d have added Ketchuperie to that list too, but we’ve had two brilliant playings of it this season (seriously – if you’ve not seen Vianney’s glorious attempt, it’s worth digging out). Spa has had a good update, although how much of that was kind of forced by Slaime, I don’t know. What is quite surprising is that we’ve only had three games – Vélo, Vertige & Dépéndence and Double Chaise – not return from last year that we didn’t already know about. That’s a pleasant surprise at least!
* Overall, I wouldn’t say a terrible series given the circumstances. I do hope they’re already thinking of what cells to bin off and what to put in their place now just in case though. And for the love of God, stop with the glacial pacing. Especially when we can predict that the Cage will appear in the last 13-15 minutes now.
I think should the original format return to UK television, I think the game clock should be set at 50 minutes (The first 25 minutes for phase 1 (With a break in between inside the cage costing 1 key.) before the judgement hall and the second half being phase 2 with the prison or Treasure chamber gate (Depending on whether or not there are prisoners at the end.) opening at the end of the game.), the team of six celebrities and the host to meet outside the entrance to the fort, and they may have put it on post watershed as there will probably be swearing and Banijay won’t want to get ITV in trouble.
I don’t know who would be hosting it though and who would be playing Boyard. (The main villain.)