We were alerted on Twitter yesterday evening that the entirety of the 1978 series of The Krypton Factor had been uploaded to Youtube. And that is, frankly, pretty exciting. A few series one eps from 1977 were already up there and it’s always fun to see a format progress. Thank God they dropped the personality round.
However we explored Anton’s Youtube Channel and there’s some absolute Krypton Factor gold on there. Here’s an ep from 1982.
I love this so much. The bombastic nonsensical title shots, also featuring Apprentice-style contestant introduction shots. GORDON BURNS HAS A MOVING DESK. Gordon Burns being able to deliver pieces to camera whilst the desk is still moving. Pre-assault course chat. The intelligence test having a Taskmaster-esque secret solution. Everyone looking about twenty-years older than their age suggests.
This might well be the peak of the show before its big 1986 revamp, there’s quite a lot of fun (read: largely unnecessary) stuff here which didn’t continue on.
Some top quality “which is the house opposite the house next door to the house with two windows fewer than it’s house number” action here which KF became quite famous for, even if they didn’t really do that sort of thing for the last ten years or so.
KF got through a fair few title sequences in its first nine years, didn’t it? (As well as not one, not two, but three distinct versions of Mike Moran’s theme tune.)
The 1983 sequence – with its psychedelic colours and spinning K-cube – must have unsettled a fair few kids (skip to 1:44):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSQPEF1kgdA
And of course, the 1984-85 sequence stretched the limits of CGI at the time – and was probably no less scary…
From the same channel, It’s Not Our Favo(u)rite: the premiere of the US teen version, here. The intelligence test is, ahem, “so different from what we’re used to”.
Two things I did like: the music for the obstacle course, though it’s horribly out-of-place, and the hug. (Wait for it!)
David Jensen sez: call THAT a moving desk?
Fair, David Jensen had the Dusty Bin of moving desks.
I do want to know how many of the buttons and switches on Gordon’s desk actually did anything and how many were just for show. My money’s on basically all of them were just there to look whizzy.
It’s the first time I’ve seen that desk…WOW! I genuinely, honestly want a go on that!!!!!!
World Wise was a tremendous example of 80s technology excess which I absolutely love, which they then ruined when Emma Freud and (it says here) Bharti Patel took over and it just looked like a standard kids behind podiums set (albeit with a CGI globe IIRC).
As we can see from this 1983 episode, the whizzy moving desk didn’t last long 🙁
https://youtu.be/OpBzlqLKzTY
I miss the discrete rotating desk from The People Versus, I don’t suppose it was too hard to stick a few motors in it when the set budget was half a million quid mind!