There are apparently 3 civilian episodes from the first revived series that never aired. Although they have aired in Australia apparently.
That’s correct, I presume there are no plans to air them.
I've always felt very sorry for any member of the public who participates in a gameshow etc, and then never actually gets to see themself on the telly because it doesn't bloody well get aired.
There are apparently 3 civilian episodes from the first revived series that never aired. Although they have aired in Australia apparently.
That’s correct, I presume there are no plans to air them.
I've always felt very sorry for any member of the public who participates in a gameshow etc, and then never actually gets to see themself on the telly because it doesn't bloody well get aired.
It’s the fact they usually don’t receive their prize money if isn’t, I’d be more concerned about.
I don’t think that’s a problem with The Crystal Maze, I doubt they hold their prizes back.
Well, Crystal Maze basically boils down to a commemorative crystal, a prize of a day away somewhere and a lifetime of memories. Unless a Men in Black style memory zapper is reality, they can't take the memories away and the crystal is effectively just a personalised thing that one can get done anywhere anyway.
I wonder, if Challenge (or whoever) were to get the rights including to the three unaired civilian episodes, does it cost them more money for those episodes than it would do with the episodes that aired? I mean they did get a large chunk of (later) Dale Supermarket Sweep that ITV for whatever reason never aired but they turned up on Challenge so...?
I've not heard that they won't be continuing with a new series of The Crystal Maze. With the USA series, a recent new zone and the money coming in from the USA, I thought there would be ample scope to continue. I cannot see a situation where the US series would continue but not the British one considering the set is based in this country. The ratings have not set Channel 4 alight but there is a loyal fan base who watch. I do continue to hope that they will show the 3 unaired editions, I wonder why they were not shown originally, was it because Series 1 was too long or that they were not exciting enough? It seems strange.
I hope The Crystal Maze continues for many more years to come!! Either tweaked or with a new Maze Master or as it is!! It deserves to stay!
C4 have never quite got the scheduling right (the Xmas special went out at 10pm FFS), but even when they put it in a slot most of us thought should work (Sunday 8pm) it didn't.
It is fair to say the revival hasn't been the hit most of us wanted it to be, but I think the issue too is it hasn't been an obvious failure too. The production values have been pretty decent, and though not universally liked I think Richard Ayode has been as good a choice as we might have wished for - certainly preferable to a whole series with Stephen Merchant. Being a couple of games light is an issue for fans of the original, and I think something that could be resolved within the given time frame, but the novelty of it's return has worn off - and though TV companies never learn the reliance on celebs is a factor as always. If they insist on them I'd rather they had teams of 4 regular people with a celeb captain, but I also think looking a family version as in the US could be worth a shot as well. Generally speaking kids usually make better TV than celebs!
I've probably said this before but I've never bought the "we only have time for 10 games" argument, because to my mind a show (any gameshow, not just the Maze) that is full of filler chatter at the start tends to automatically imply the show is otherwise going to run short. I believe the current running time is somewhere around 47 mins of programme? The original was probably about 50mins an episode?
Tipping Point does this on occasion where they randomly drop in some contestant chatter at the beginning of the third round and it almost always implies in the following round either the remaining contestant will get most of the questions wrong, the jackpot counter will come out relatively quickly or they'll only go for one or two counter questions (and/or have a large amount of riders). All of which serve to reduce the running time.
One of the things that really worked about the original Maze was that all you got was "Hi Fred, you're the Team Captain, Daphne you're the vice captain if Fred gets locked in. Excellent, let's get inside when I blow my whistle". None of this "Fred you used to work for British Rail, answer me this: are the 'leaves on the line' excuses real? Any other funny stories? Nice to meet you, Daphne it says here you work in a library, what's your favourite book?" type stuff.
But then I suppose in an era of "celebrity" where you can get famous by throwing up YouTube videos, they're sort of used to prattling on for hours about nothing so...
I do think having teams of friends has actually lessened the impact of the lock-ins too as generally speaking they buy them out regardless - not sure actually if there have been any episodes where less than 5 took part at the Dome. In the original run losing at least one of the six for the Dome was a frequent enough occurence.
This video is region blocked in the UK so you will need to use a proxy or VPN to watch it, but the first episode of the US Crystal Maze has been uploaded by Nickelodeon - I guess they must feel confident enough in it to release the episode in advance.
Notes: generally is similar to the C4 version - 2 games per zone for a total of 8 and chance at a mega crystal. Adam Conover returns to being a more supportive but snarky host but keeps some script beats to the C4 revival version (mentioning the change in headwear for games between shots, offhand comment suggesting the crystals are a naff prize) - he needs some time to settle in, but I can see him being a good US counterpart
Also they curiously choose to place commercial breaks in the middle of games rather than between zone transitions. It does rather work though means annoyingly you get about 15-20 seconds of a game twice.
One of the biggest issues of the C4 revival is feeling a bit less invested in the game outcome - I don't know what C4 is doing wrong, but Nick are doing better at it. Granted the first episode might be the best one of this set - but the family in this episode...you genuinely want to cheer for them. It's something I've missed from the UK version since it returned. The new graphics are very nice too.
Last edited by ChipperBird on 22 January 2020 3:49am
My issue with the UK version is that its played for laughs and the audience are almost felt to be silly for liking the show/concept. I think a fair amount of this comes from having Richard Ayoade as host. The contestant chatter and slow pace results in fewer games played as well. I think with a few tweaks (basically reversing changes that were made for this version) could actually make the C4 version of the show great and on par with the original 90s version.
My issue with the UK version is that its played for laughs and the audience are almost felt to be silly for liking the show/concept. I think a fair amount of this comes from having Richard Ayoade as host. The contestant chatter and slow pace results in fewer games played as well. I think with a few tweaks (basically reversing changes that were made for this version) could actually make the C4 version of the show great and on par with the original 90s version.
I suspect modern audiences probably couldn't cope with the speed of the original show, because by the time they've cobbled together a tweet that said Fred was crap at that game or Daphne's incredibly unhelpful shouting at Shaggy to stick that in there, or "Wish Velma would stop faffing with her bloody glasses every five minutes" and posted it, they're already halfway through the next game.
It's probably safe to assume the original show was totally unique, nothing else was like it at the time, it came about by accident because it was basically Fort Boyard in different colours but the original fort wasn't available for whatever reason, I forget why, so all the changes they had to make to the format helped to make a unique show. It can never be the same again.
Realistically if we were going to have the original format on the modern show it would have happened from the off or the one-off special the year before. Unfortunately modern gameshows seem to thrive on people standing around waffling on about nothing as filler material, as I said above.