There’s no Crystal Maze tonight as it’s ended its run. So! Thanks to a tweet from @danielmarkhurst let us revisit what ITV were determined to make “the new Crystal Maze” in 2010 with the second of two episodes of… The Door, with thanks to the uploader:

Looking at it through 2018 eyes it looks pretty damn lavish, they would have had to have built separate sets for each of the challenges and they look pretty good. Really it’s a shame the challenges are a bit trite (and it feels like that laser maze goes on for about ten minutes) and involve a lot of Rummaging In Stuff (this was particularly true of the first ep IIRC) and the US style confessionals remain hugely irritating. Great imagination in the sets, less so in the content. If you want to read what we thought at the time, there are two threads here and here.

It’s not the first time ITV had tried to upscale Bushtucker Trials into their own format as they tried making a big thing of Scream If You Want To Get Off, starring Nigel Marven and Charlie Brockett, but despite the claims at the time it was the scariest show on television it basically ended up being It’s a Knockout + an occasional animal in South Africa. It didn’t last long.

It always amazes me to remember that in the first series of I’m a Celeb, one of the trials was just Nell McAndrew on a Bucking Bronco.

OK then, let’s see what has transpired. Don’t forget that these are given anonymously, so the actual truths are known only to the relevant parties. Here we go!

• This is a bit of a weird opinion, but I think if the Weakest Link comes back it should be presented by Greg Davies playing a similar character to on Taskmaster. He feels so much more of a natural fit than all the other people being suggested. [Speaking of which, it’s been almost a year since the CiN Special and everyone was clamouring for a new series off the back of it despite the one-off being, well, not that good. What’s happened with that?]
• Jeremy Clarkson’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire originally used pairs of contestants. I’m not sure what about Clarkson’s cheery demeanour made people think this would be a bad idea. [Not sure I ever really liked it as a pairs game, to be honest.]
• Safeword US debuted its new season last week. They’ve screwed up the format: Teams play games to earn points, but have to post embarrassing things online to keep them. Loser takes a lie detector test. [I must confess I’ve never really watched Safeword, even if it does star FOTB Rick Edwards.]
• I recently saw the words ‘University Challenge Dating Show‘ floating about as a format pitch. [I hope Jeremy Paxman will narrate. This sounds like a horrendous idea. And yet! I’m as guilty of playing the would/wouldn’t game as everyone else on Twitter.] 
• With the popularity of Fornite these days, I wouldn’t be shocked to see them try and make a TV version of it (If they were smart, they’d adapt the Battle For Money format- that show seems tailor-made for it)… [Funnily enough, I wrote a post about this sort of thing all the way back in March.]

And there we are! New season starts next week so hopefully we won’t be opening the Stool Pigeon for a little while.

It might be wet outside, but the gameshow news and OPINION well is dry. What do we do in these circumstances? We bring out the Stool Pigeon for (almost) anonymous gossip. The box will be open until 8pm and if anything good comes up will reprint later.

This is now closed.

Some good/interesting stuff on Saturday so here’s a kind of general signpost. All times UK.

• 6:30 – Japandemonium (ITV)
• 7:00 – Big Star’s Little Star (ITV)
• 7:15 – Impossible Celebs (BBC1)
• 7:15 – Time Battle (ProSieben) – we won’t be doing a separate post for this but we will be tuning in as it looks quite fun. From what I’ve learned, teams of two take part, one does some sort of skill-based challenge to earn time for their partner who has to do a quiz round. The best performers win €50,000.
• 7:55 – Fort Boyard (France 2) – Team Bruno Guillion, which tends to be entertaining. Will also be up on Youtube ungeoblocked after broadcast.
• 8:00 – Blind Date (Channel 5)
• 8:15 – Pointless Celebs (BBC1).
• 9:00 – Gino’s Win Your Wish List (Channel 5)
• 10:00 – Celebrity Big Brother (Channel 5)

It’s Dave Benson-Phillips as it turns out.

I was doing some Youtube diving the other night going into the channel that had that Price Is Right episode the other day (lots of good stuff on it btw) that we talked about and rather brilliantly it had this, a piece of music I was kind of fascinated by as a teen.

It’s the rather fabulous end theme for peak era Get Your Own Back, which was also used as clock music for some of the games at the time, the show’s early foray into the arena-style after it left the fairground set. It sounds like it was written by Harold Faltermayer of The Running Man and Axel F fame, and it sounds completely out of kilter for a light-hearted kids It’s a Knockout style show. The music for Squeal On The Wheel feels especially doom-laden, and I kind of dig it.

Yet it wasn’t written by Harold Faltermayer, it was written by the musician and comic Steve Brown, who is probably best known for playing band-leader Glen Ponder in Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge in the early 90s.

GYOB went through a couple of variations on its decade-plus long run and has TWO golden periods. No, not the fine-but-unnecessary Lisa Brockwell years (let’s be clear here, it was always going to be Big Dave’s show). Not the era of the Forfeit Furnace where they tried to go large on the fairground set, but when the show first moved from a 15 minute show to a 25 minute one and the very last series where the adult (the Chump) was the one earning the points to avoid the gunge with the kid (the Challenger) trying to stop them (for the latter two-thirds of the run the kid would try and earn the points whilst the grown-up would try and obstruct or undo the work under a handicap). They added a new big round – It’s Puzzle Time, which had a clever twist with the kids swapping teams to try and help the other adult earn as many points as possible – and a couple of bonus games where the kids could reduce their adult’s score. It all felt quite well thought out and fun, and I think the Brain Box round and it’s mangle was missed.

This series was also the last time we saw the original and best Gunk Dunk game where the adult had to answer questions against the clock with obvious answers that all started with a certain letter but none of their answers were allowed to begin with the letter. I’m surprised this has never been reversioned in some capacity.

Anyway it’s quite sad watching DBP scrabble about in the internet wilderness these days, if Pat Sharp can can still dine out on a haircut he’s not actually had for 25 years, is there really no room for Uncle Dave on CBBC?