11/6/2022 0 Comments The crystal maze game show![]() ![]() This turned out to be a disused aircraft hangar in North Weald, in north-east London. #The crystal maze game show series#For series one, the maze was built in Shepperton Studios, but by the time planning for the second series began, both studios were booked and the hunt started for a new location. There were only two studios in Britain that were large enough to house the maze. It was a custom-built set which was the biggest in Europe, approximately the size of two football pitches and cost something in the area of £250,000. The Maze itself was not really a maze: it was more a circuit of interconnecting zones. At the climax of the show, contestants would have to collect gold tokens in a windy dome, a little like the gold coins collected in Fort Boyard. 'Time crystals' replaced the keys, and different zones were added for variety. As the fort for the UK series was not going to be ready for the first pilot episode, the production team thought of a different way to make a programme along the same lines as Fort Boyard, but which could be constructed a little more quickly. The Crystal Maze idea came about really by accident. Other than that, the French show was played for charity, lasted for 90 minutes and had no commercial breaks. The coins collected would then be converted into money at the end. These clues gave a word which was required to release the gold coins into a barred container. They needed a certain amount of keys to open a large portcullis where gold coins were held. It involved completing games of various types, on completion of which, the team would win a key. It was originally based on Fort Boyard, a French initiative game show run in a remote fort in the middle of the sea. It was their number one programme, with between four million and six million viewers, and was shown in 29 different countries. ![]() The Crystal Maze, a Chatsworth Television production for Channel 4, was first aired in 1990 in the UK. ![]() But this still doesn't take the limelight away from one of the most mind-boggling and testing game shows of the past, The Crystal Maze. Now, in the 21st Century, the game show is glamorised either as a red-headed woman ritually insulting people for getting general knowledge questions wrong, or a house with 24-hour CCTV showing just how exciting it is to watch people doing nothing and being evicted every now and then. In the 1990s, our screens were filled with game shows which tested the initiative and brainpower of the contestants, such as The Krypton Factor and Trivial Pursuit. ![]()
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