I Have Had My Tiny Little Mind Blown - There Was A Sequel Series to Crystal Maze: Magic Carnival

It's escaped my notice for 25 years, but there was a follow up to The Crystal Maze.

Last night I was watching Channel 4's "Back to the '90s", part of a series celebrating 4 decades of Channel 4. I was doing my usual thing on Twitter, liking and retweeting everything remotely relevant to this humble little blog. Every mention of quality Channel 4 programming (of which GamesMaster was noticeable by its absence). One tweet certainly grabbed my attention:

I Art Directed the last original series of The Crystal Maze, such a buzz to work on #backtothe90s

— Richard Drew (@dickydrew) December 28, 2020

The whole thread is there to find on Twitter, and after some messages, something came up that I've never heard of in 30ish years of being far too obsessed with a quirky Channel 4 gameshow:

I was very fortunate in my AD career to work with some fantastic Production Designers, but James and Dennis ( de Groot) probably had the biggest influence on me. James n I did the follow up show Magic Carnival together, was meant to succeed CM but it only got to pilot stage.

— Richard Drew (@dickydrew) December 29, 2020

Magic Carnival. Never heard of it. Tried Googling it and all that comes up is the cruise liner of the same name.

Richard then went on to mention his Instagram feed (which I highly recommend a perusal of if you're interested in the design side of television) @thescaleruler and, well, I'll let his feed do the rest.

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Richard has worked on quite a range of projects over the years, from gameshows and stand up specials to sitcoms and dramas. I recommend having a look through his posts if you've even a passing interest in TV production because it's all really quite fascinating. Especially the set for the pilot of "Meet Ricky Gervais", see what you can pick out.