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.
And I thank you in advance for the separate post, Brig!
In sort of reality news, I saw Legally Blond: The Musical last night, which had its own Webber-esque talent search on MTV. So there you are!
But it’s a three-team version, isn’t it?
It’s effectively two-teams in two different competitions, with three teams in it.
It doesn’t mind Americans either. Fantastic. ^_^
“I’m not-so-secretly hoping for the latter” You want it offing? Oh Briiiig :<
Oops, changed.
“… so people watching in Canada can avoid spoilers.”
Dawwww… So sweet. 😛
I’m one of the people that appreciates this – just saw the premiere last night!
not sure if the pluzz thing is working yet, but according to the show site, it’ll be up there on Monday…probably doing that to get people to use the new service I’d suspect..
Other shows that appeared on Wednesday still haven’t made it on there. That said, FB is a big thing, I reckon, so they should be able to put it on quickish.
Up and running : http://www.pluzz.fr/fort-boyard-2010-07-10.html
All I get is 30 seconds of a black screen.
I get 30 seconds of being told that the video is unavailable in my region. >_<
Yes, the official site suggests it’s not going up until Monday. Interesting.
I’m getting the not available outside of France message also. Rubbish! Any idea how else I can watch the show from the UK?
Whilst I’m going to wait until I’ve seen the whole thing before passing comment, I get the feeling it isn’t the show I fell in love with…
http://www.wat.tv/video/fort-boyard-2010-burin-2yn4f_2i9rx_.html
http://www.wat.tv/video/fort-boyard-2010-relais-etriers-2yn2d_2i9rx_.html
Oh no, it IS doing what I feared it would do. Damn it Denmark!
Ratings are in – and even it’s not really relevant due to WC third place final, it’s not really good news for Fort Boyard :
TF1 – 3rd Place match 6.045m , 39%
F2 – Fort Boyard 1.968m 12.7% (2nd place)
Well, Burin is massively flawed.
I have seen the intro on YouTube and thought it looked like they were going down the uber serious route 🙁
http://fort-boyard.france2.fr/index.php?page=videos&videoid=234&id=3 It’s up now!
OK, the first few minutes do a bit to calm my OH NO RUINED FOREVER initial views. It’s basically what happens when you bunch 40 of them together and send them all off against each other. Admittedly, if this was how they did it all along, I wouldn’t mind, but…there’s been 20 seasons.
Well, overall, quite disappointing indeed.
Not liking the interview interruptions through the games. Or Olivers overview. You don’t need to be told what the aim of the game is! Let it play out! Grrr
I’m sure Brig will do this later, but for the sake of the people who don’t speak french, can someone explain the new format?
Yes, I’ll change the main bit later.
And GET THIS PEEPS, I quite liked it.
Its intresting that people dislike it. Which is probley because of the shows history. Considering its got budget cuts its done very well.
I quite enjoyed the show. But in a way i was annoyed by the continueing Commentary from players during the game. Which i believe should have been done by split screen during the game.
It took awhile to get use to the auto lock in situration in some of the games. Although manoiler was just plain unfair. Loving the new safes.
I am disspointed with the new change of ventouse. It looked far too easy.
As far as clue games being played using the Clepsydre it makes it more intresting. But on 9/10 of the games you cant really escape if time runs out.
Overall its only main downside like brig said is the history. I know a few french people who are really upset over it. I suppose its just. adapt to the change. because it works.
Intresting to note the show is faster in a sense. because if each team take part in 6 Key/Clue games and 6 Duels then were about the same level in less time. Plus the 4 duels.
In fairness though, the graphics are a bit poor.
I liked it well enough, I guess. The constant auto-lock-in seemed a bit much, though. But I wonder if in later episodes, say if a team has a slight lead, but one of their stronger players is in prison, if a weaker player would take on a game and purposely lose to try and ensure the better player is free…?
The other thing I’m mostly unsure about is having the team decide who plays, especially when it comes to the former adventures. Not as much fun seeing someone who doesn’t mind spiders picking them up. Plus, it seemed like some players didn’t do as much as others.
Shame they couldn’t have kept Mr. Chan as an auto-lock-in game. 😛
Midgame chats seemed off for me, but I can’t judge that as much, since I can’t quite pickup all they are saying, so not sure if I’d enjoy it more if my French was better.
And I thought Ventouse looked a lot harder. Until the rope came into play. -_-; And Burin… WTF…?
Easy to pick out flaws, though. Overall, seems like a decent format (personally, I think it would work out *really* well Stateside with a similar style). Yeah, it’s not quite the Fort we know and love (maybe they should have subtitled it?), but it’s still a fun show to watch.
Totally agree with you on having it here in this format. Drop the key games, 2 teams, 3 duels and 3 sets of individual challenges, Council, Treasure Room. That should fit into a hour long timeslot.
You took the words right out of my mouth – I wondered how you could adapt it for a US (or, indeed, UK) audience, the answer seems to be “drop the 1st part”. It’s not like keys have a point other than a scoring device this year, somewhat upsettingly.
Although actually, I get the feeling if you dropped the first part, you’d probably also be dropping the riddle in the tower.
I dunno about that. Four duels, make two of the duels be riddle ones. And with four players, toss in a rule that each player can only do one duel.
That’d be twelve games, eight per team, including riddles, which is roughly how many the usual hour-long formats generally have. Keep either the relay or the duels for a chance to release prisoners. Treasure Room at the end, and there’s your game.
Either new teams each week, or maybe opt for a standard single-elimination tourney (or new Glads format of, say, top four teams come back at the end), and there’s your season.
Single elimination was how I thought there were going to do it when I heard there were going to be seven episodes, so there’s no reason why that shouldn’t work.
Finally got to watching it, and honestly, given the track record here over this past weekend, I’m surprised no corporate lackey has come in and expressed forced excitement about how much they enjoyed the show. Maybe it’s because they really don’t have to… This show was good on its own.
Then again, I guess I should mention that I’ve not been a huge FB fan in the past. I always enjoyed the FBFriday clips of individual clips that used to be posted here, but when I finally got to Europe and saw a full episode for the first time, I was just bored. Well, not bored, but it just seemed to drag on for way too long (and it didn’t help that I was already way tired by the time I started watching it). This 90-minute version seems to move a lot more quickly, which I appreciate, but at the same time, it does seem to be missing something. Like, the atmosphere I saw back then was gone. It’s not so much one team against the fort, it’s one team against another team. It’s sorta lost its impact.
Still, I think some some ground has been made here, at least in terms of attracting less-than-regular viewers like myself. Maybe I would prefer the format of the old show with the pacing of the new. I’m still not sure that I’ll tune in on a regular basis, but it still feels more entertaining than what I’ve seen in the past. Good on them, I guess.
I’ve been complaining for the last couple of years that the show has suffered from bloat – whenever it pushes two hours it seems to suffer not only as a show but also in the ratings. when they rejuvenate it and get it back towards 90 minutes, it seems to do quite well again.
The first episode rated poorly unfortunately, and whilst I’m not one for excuses it was up against a world cup match. Next week it’s only up against repeats, so fingers crossed.
I have to say i am not a fan of the new format, mainly for reasons already discussed by others above.
The show is for me too serious and needs a bit of something to lighten the competition. I also quite likes the Chinese mans puzzles and they and he seam to be gone 🙁
On the plus side the duals work very well as does the treasure room.
I will give it another go, maybe just not what im use to thats why i took a bit of a dislike to it.