Happy 25th birthday to Channel 5! For the first five years or so of its life it was probably THE place to go for The Sort Of Things We Like – four series of Fort Boyard, two brilliant series of The Mole, The Desert Forges, Whittle and of course a show that predated the escape room craze (even if it didn’t know it at the time) by a good ten-fifteen years or so Jailbreak from 2000. Someone uploaded another episode last year, look:
Escape rooms as TV shows is still the nut everyone’s been trying to crack to not much success – our favourite being Race to Escape, but that was only a one-series wonder.
Of course we can’t forget Big Brother, of varying quality, but “David’s dead” is the greatest reality TV moment of all time, so there’s that.
Nowadays there’s not much on Channel 5 that we watch, unfortunately. But we hope that one day they dip their toes back into adventure.
There’s a few episodes on that channel, as well as a load of Games World stuff. Nice!
When I think of early-era Channel 5 and quizzes, 100% is all that immediately springs to mind. Although as you point out, it did also have Whittle and some great programmes that meet the wider definition of a game show which the other four terrestrial stations just weren’t giving a chance to at the time (okay, sometimes Channel 4 sorta did take that kind of risk).
Wish all of Jailbreak was uploaded somewhere would love to rewatch it all