Fort Boyard 2010 goes two team in a last throw of the dice that will either be a huge success, or bring the twenty-year old show to a close. I’m not-so-secretly hoping for the former, and that this will be the first two-team version that’s actually convincing. It’s on 8:35pm French time, which is 7:35pm in the UK – it’s unlikely you’ll find a live stream, but the official site will almost certainly have the new episodes after they’ve played out, and will almost certainly come under Divertissement on France Televisions’ new catch up service Pluzz, which doesn’t seem to mind if you’re from the UK. There is a fair chance that a new Fort Boyard post will go up weekly for people who want to discuss the episode, so people watching in Canada can avoid spoilers.

You can watch it on the Fort Boyard site.

Edit: For my money, it’s the most convincing two-team version of the show yet, but twenty years of history is likely to go against it. But if you had never really watched it before, I think you’d quite enjoy it. How does it work then? Please be aware that I’m working this out just as you are:

• 48 people are split into 12 teams (apparently balanced in ability by the producers). On the getting-together day before the first episode is filmed, the six match-ups are drawn from a tiger’s head. The winner of each match-up in the first part of the show meets the current champions in the second half of the show, for the first episode, the champions are a team of four made up from contestants who played the game right back in 1990-91 which is a really neat bit of fan service.
• Right, the first stage: the two teams attempt to collect keys. The team with the most keys goes on to face the Champions, but if a team takes an uncatchable lead then the segment is over. Games come in two flavours – duels and challenges. A duel is a race between teams on a game that’s been redesigned to work for two opposing teams. The winner of the duel wins a key, but the losing team also suffer a disadvantage in the individual challenges that follow. One of the duels is up in the tower with Pere Fouras – players ring a central bell as a buzzer.
• Each team then gets an traditional individual challenge, but this may be a traditional test as before or it may be what you used to call an adventure. Tests work exactly the same as they used to – get in, get the key, get out before the time runs out or you’re taken prisoner. Modified adventures are also timed by water timer, the key is in a box with a four-digit padlock, the game is won if they get the key in time. If they don’t, and the player hasn’t left the area in time (in games where they can), the key drops down the central pole of the box and becomes unobtainable and the player becomes a prisoner. Crucially, if your team lost the previous duel, then you must come out with the key or not at all. The teams get to select who plays each game.
• If a team takes more than one prisoner, each subsequent one takes the place of whoever was imprisoned last.
• After three duels and three rounds of individual challenges, the teams meet up in the Council to try and free their prisoner. Two duels are played, winning one will release your prisoner, obviously if you both have prisoners then you want to win both games to give yourself an advantage in the Crossbow Relay.
• The Crossbow Relay is the final game and worth two keys. It’s a four part relay of various challenges starting at the bottom of the fort and ending up the top – if you’re a man down then one person is going to have to do two parts which is going to be knackering. The team with the most keys goes into part two, the losing team is kicked off the fort.
• Part two works very similarly to part one except each game is worth a clue cannister (whcih doesn’t have a clue inside). Again, these can be what you’d used to call tests but played for a clue instead.
• Crucially, winning a duel at this point gives you a second advantage – not only do you force your opponents to play win-at-all-costs in their next challenge, but you also get to hear what the two challenges are and assign them to teams.
• Three duels and three challenges each it’s back to the council to try and release the prisoners. Obviously the stakes are much higher here, being a man down to collect treasure is a distinct disadvantage.
• Business done and dusted, it’s off to the treasure room. The treasure has already fallen, our teams now have 3:30 to work out the code word and collect as much as possible. Olivier dispenses clues from his whizzy table thing, every ten seconds the table unlocks another clue to teams that have earnt them. Teams can as usual sacrifice a player for an extra clue, although they tell Olivier they want to do it rather than putting their hands in a tiger’s head. Once they have decided what it is, they write it on a bit of slate, then access the treasure room through a tunnel (for no discernable reason). Each team has their own funnel to put their treasure in on either side of the central gate (which rises at 01:00 then starts falling again at 0:30).
• Collection over, and presuming everyone has escaped, each team gets their gold weighed – in kilograms and grams rather than monetary worth. The team with the most gold wins PROVIDED they also have the codeword correct – the team that collected the lesser amount of gold can still win if they are correct and the better team get the code word wrong.
• The winning team win €10,000 and come back as Champions the next episode, with a view to being one of the top three teams to come back for the €40,000 Super final.

Right, let’s get this out of the way, the classic adventure music appears to have disappeared for good, there’s not much room for comedy (it really is all about the competition), it’s going to take a while to get your head round the merging of test and adventure, it does that annoying American thing of having the contestant describe what they did in a sort of third-person commentary on games that really don’t require it. There is no more running around the Fort. This is not your mother’s Fort Boyard.

But. But but but but but. The game works. They’ve put much more effort into coming up with potentially interesting duels than previous two team versions have done that don’t just involve climbing. Laboulle has a proper presence and a point he’s been missing for several years. It’s still got Pere Fouras. The end game is the first two-team version that isn’t a gimme for the team doing best going into it. The Fort looks great, and the Council’s never looked better. It’s back down to about 90 minutes.

I was expecting to dislike it, but actually I can see what it’s gone for and I think it just about succeeds and look forward to next week. It’s just a shame it’s called Fort Boyard and it’s set on Fort Boyard, really – it’d be nice if they could find some of the show’s old personality at some point.