The world of Fort Boyard (Fort Boyard)

Member Name: stephen2001

Product:	Fort Boyard
Date:	12/07/01 (1151 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tests the viewers mind, Interesting to watch

Disadvantages: It's on Channel 5

Fort Boyard is a game show aired on Friday evenings on Channel 5 where five contestants work together as a team performing individual tasks in order to win money.
The show is staged on a genuine fort off the coast of western France in the Bay of Biscay. This was bought by a French television company for their version of Fort Boyard on which the British version is based. It was kitted out to suit the needs of the game show from the tasks to safety equipment and various camera positions.

If you remember the Crystal Maze on Channel 4 many years ago, the concept used in Fort Boyard is very similar and the tasks are pretty much the same. For those who don’t remember, the ideas and rules are fairly easy to pick up.
Each team is made up of five contestants, normally friends, work-mates etc. etc. They are given 40 minutes to complete a series of tasks which is split into two parts. The first part is to collect four keys which can be done by completing tasks set by Boyard (Leslie Grantham). Such tasks may involve physical, agility and mental exercises. Once they have the four keys, they are then able to go onto the second part of the game where the remaining time is used to collect words which all have a one word link. At the end of the 40 minutes, they have to guess this word. If they get it right, a pile of coins falls into a small cage at the centre of the arena where the contestants have 45 seconds to collect as many of these coins as possible and deposit them onto a tray where they are then weighed and converted into pounds and pence.

The main presenter of Fort Boyard is Melinda Messenger, the former Page 3 Girl. She leads the team around the fort offering them encouragement and advice when required to help the team get through their tasks.
Lesley Grantham plays Boyard, Keeper of the Fort. He is the bad guy who desperately wants the team to fail. He fumes when they are successful in their challenges and gloats when t
hey aren’t. In the original French version, Boyard is actually the good guy who wants the team to win the money!
Geoffrey Bayldon plays an old mad professor who is held in the fort by Boyard. He sets riddles which helps the contestants to gain keys or words.
There are two small guys who show the team to their various tasks. They are actually French and because of this, although they are not shown much in the English version, they are a lot more prominent in the French version.

For those familiar with the show in Britain, I have a couple of thoughts. When I saw the French version, in the final challenges for the words, they seemed to be betting numbers of something on completing tasks. With my limited knowledge of the French language, I think it would have been extra words that would be given out if the task was successful.
Also in the French version, there was a lot of humorous additions in between the tasks to break the program up a bit.
Having only seen the French version once on holiday, I can’t really gauge whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing if some parts were implemented into the British version. I do believe that if the British producers do try to do too much, then the program will be spoilt.

Overall, this is a very good program which really relaxes your mind yet because it is on Channel 5, it doesn’t get as much audience viewing as it deserves.

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