Worth stopping in on a Friday night! (Fort Boyard)

Member Name: SusanLesley

Product:	Fort Boyard
Date:	11/07/01 (386 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, Tense, Entertaining

Disadvantages: None

Fort Boyard is on Channel 5 at 8pm on Friday evening. It is a game show set in an old building somewhere off the coast of France. I use the term ‘building’, as I don’t know quite what to call it.

Maybe it is a fort as the name of the show suggests. The building is oval in shape, with high straight brick walls, and an open courtyard in the middle. There are rooms set into the walls, which are used as the settings for the games.

The idea of the game is that a team of five players tries to get the gold from the fort. They complete various puzzles in order to obtain four keys. These keys are used to open a gate beyond which is the gold, but there’s a further stage to the game. The players must also do daring challenges in order to receive clues to the word needed to unlock the gold.

Let me explain in more detail. The fort is ‘owned’ by Boyard played by Leslie Grantham, better known as Dirty Den from Eastenders. Melinda Messenger helps the members of the team throughout the show.

The team consists of five friends or colleagues of either sex, who need to be physically fit and pretty fearless. They all wear exercise gear, crop tops, shorts, leotards etc and trainers.

The game begins with the team having to open the huge gate to enter the fort and they have to do this by pulling on ropes attached to pulleys that lift the gate in portcullis fashion. They then have 40 minutes to complete the game and get the gold.

Boyard picks each team member in turn and sends him or her into one of the rooms to collect a key. This part of the game is similar to Crystal Maze, which used to be on Channel 4, except for the fact that these games all involve strength or stamina or both!

I’ll give you a couple of examples, if I can think of some that are easy enough to explain. There was one last week where the room contained a huge tube twisting up from floor to ceiling with the key han
ging at the top. The contestant had to get into the tube and climb to the top, collect the key and climb back down the inside of the tube.

I can’t think of another game that I can actually explain in words, so you’ll have to watch the programme to find out!

Whilst the contestant is in the room trying to get the key the other team members are outside watching on a TV monitor and offering advice and encouragement. Melinda Messenger usually explains exactly how the game is to be completed in order to get the key.

The contestants are given one minute to complete each game. If they do not get out, with or without the key, before the time is up they are locked in a cage until the second part of the show, where the challenges for clues begin.

Another way for the team to get a key is when Boyard sends one of them up into the watchtower where an eccentric old gentleman, the professor, gives them a series of clues to solve all leading to the same one word answer. If the person solves it correctly he gives them the key, if not he throws the key, attached to a flotation device, into the sea. Then one of the other team members has to dive off a platform set in the side of the fort and swim out to fetch it climbing up a scramble net to get back to the platform.

When their time for this part of the show is up they have to go to the courtyard gate with the keys. If they have fewer than four keys they have to sacrifice a team member in exchange for a key until they have four.

The four keys are then placed above the gate, turned and it opens revealing the courtyard with a cage at the far end where the gold drops for collection by the team at the end of the game, providing they get the answer to the final part correct. There is also a grid of letters on the floor to spell out the clue word. I’ll explain more about this later on.

First the team need to get the answer to the clue word. They will now be sel
ected one by one to do various challenges in order to get a word clue. The answer to the final part of the game is the one word that links all the other words. For example the answer might be ‘night’, guessed from the following clues (night) watchman, silent (night), (night) time and mid (night).

To get the clues there are a series of challenges to perform which include some of the following – Tightrope walking across the top of the fort over the courtyard beneath to reach a clue at the other end.
Swinging over the top of the fort standing on a swing and loosing one hand to grab the clue when you swing high enough
Entering a pit of snakes and looking for the word written on a piece of paper stuck to one of the snakes
Bungee jumping off a platform towards the sea and catching the clue on your way back up
There’s also one involving mice, beetles, grasshoppers, frogs and flies but I couldn’t possibly explain it so you’ll have to watch the programme for that one!
The easiest clue to get is a further trip into the watchtower following the same routine as before. Even if you don’t get the clue word you can memorise what the professor has said and tell the rest of the team who may be able to work it out.

There is a set amount of time to reach each clue before you are either stopped in your pursuit of the clue or the clue bursts into flames. IT must be soul destroying to tightrope walk all the way across the fort only to find you run out of time just before you get to the clue and it bursts into flames!

Anyway now the team heads back to the courtyard. If they haven’t got enough clues to work out the answer they can sacrifice a team member to get another clue until they get the answer.

They then head into the courtyard and stand on the lettered grid with one person standing on each letter of the word that is the final answer, using cannon balls to cover letters if there
aren’t enough team members left to cover every letter in the word. They then wait and, if they are correct, the gold cascades down into the cage at the end of the courtyard.

They then have two minutes to reach through the bars of the cage and grab as much gold as possible before the gate comes all the way down to the floor and tigers are released into the courtyard. I haven’t yet seen anyone get trapped in the courtyard with the tigers, but I do wonder whether that would actually happen???

The gold is then weighed and the final total is put on the leader board. The highest team on the leader board at the end of the series wins. I haven’t actually worked out whether any or all of the teams get to keep the gold that they win or not though.

The whole show is really entertaining viewing. Leslie Grantham is excellent as the sneering Boyard constantly telling the contestants that they’re no good and will never get his gold. Melinda Messenger is good as the hostess although she does irritate me a bit sometimes as she continually says ‘you’re doing well’ to the contestants as they are trying to win keys and clues.

Summary: