Who Are The Final Set of Contestants For This Series (New Years Eve, 8pm)

 Almost as suddenly as it started, this series is almost over. However, we've still got one last episode to enjoy. So for the last time this series, who are they? Where've you seen them before? Which one's been on Strictly or I'm a Celeb? Keep reading after the photo.

'Game Shows I Suppose' Covers The Crystal Maze, with @jordha

Podcaster, comedian and 'lonely nerd' (his words, not mine) Jordan Hass has been talking about game shows on his weekly podcast 'Game Shows I Suppose' since 2018. He's clearly got a love of the genre and has covered shows from both sides of the Atlantic alongside a range of guests. A great example to me is talking 'Big Break' with Ben Paddon, whom I once randomly had a game of 'You Don't Know Jack' with, which really caught my attention because I met Ben in the same town where I once annoyed Jim Davidson, it's a small world after all.

Jordan has long mentioned his love of everybody's favourite Channel 4 adventure game show on GSIS and today sees the drop of his TCM episode. It's just over 100 minutes of a guy talking about his favourite British game show so if you like/love/have heard of TCM: subscribe, put the kettle on, put your feet up, play Fall Guys, and have a listen.

Jordan can be found at -

• jordanhass.com
• twitter.com/jordha
• twitch.tv/JordanGames
• patreon.com/jordanhass

My Trip Last Year to Test Out Games For The Crystal Maze

I've been sat around pretty bored of late. I keep ending up on eBay buying Crystal Maze related paraphernalia (more on that lot in another post for another day) so I thought I'd distract myself by recounting my travel last year from the North East to the South West to test games for The Crystal Maze.

I'll start by saying I don't drive, but thankfully we've got pretty good public transport covering the length and breadth of Great Britain. 

So...

Step 1 - Home to Middlesbrough: ~15 Miles. 

This stage is the easy bit. It's a trip I make not uncommonly. I went to Uni over there so it's somewhere I'm familiar with. At this time, McDonalds was doing Grand Big Macs so naturally, I had to go gorge myself on one in my usual combo - large meal, Big Mac, Fries, Strawberry milkshake. They should do GBMs more often because that meal kept me fed for the rest of what would be a long day. The meal in bag in hand, I head back to the bus station to wait for my first coach. I didn't take it on the coach, food in my possession rarely stays uneaten for long.

Step 2 - Middlesbrough to Leeds: ~65 miles

Crystal Maze Games That Were Too Hard To Win

One problem I've got with TCM since it came back, too many people going home with a prize. It's partly down to 50+ gold getting a middling prize but, and there's a mild spoiler for the US version rapidly approaching here so keep on reading at your own peril, out of 10 shows there was at least 3 and maybe 4 top prize winners.

A 100+ gold winner should be a treat, a rarity, there shouldn't be nearly half a series of winners. People are clearly winning too many games and earning too much time. A little conversation I had the other night started at frogs and ended up at games that were never won and as such, here's the '90s games that were never won, and should be looked at so as to stop people winning quite so often. I'm not including any of those one-off games made for a kid's Christmas Special as it's a lot easier to be an unbeaten game if only one small person has a go.

Series 1 - 1990

Nuke Defusing - A nice simple two minute game sharing a room with a nuclear bomb. It needed defusing by connecting the correct coloured wire to the associated image on the wall. For example connecting the YELLOW wire to a picture of some PAGES, or a GREEN wire to some FINGERS. The trouble comes in knowing what word was meant to be shown by the image, while it was meant to represent fingers, it's clearly a picture of a hand. With a two minute time limit, there was an explosion every time. Or the lights were turned up. Same thing.

The Crystal Maze US Episode 1 Review

There's a storied history of UK shows getting remade for international audiences. Occasionally they click, Steptoe and Son was recrafted as Sanford and Son in the States and it worked out pretty well. Unfortunately more often than not, something gets lost in the translation. Red Dwarf had two pilot episodes produced across the pond in the early 90s and neither worked. The IT Crowd had a pilot made in 2006 which had Richard Ayoade reprise his role as Moss alongside Joel McHale as Roy in what was essentially a shot for shot remake of the first UK episode and that exercise in futility led nowhere. Davina McCall's The Million Pound Drop was hugely successful during its run here but The Million Dollar Money Drop hosted by actor Kevin Pollack only lasted 12 episodes.

What's successfully designed, written and crafted for one audience may not resonate with an entirely different target market. We love black pudding but there's some places where fried pigs blood just won't fly. So when I found out that The Crystal Maze was going to be adapted for US TV, I was apprehensive. This is a show I've a had special connection with since I was the grand old age of 1 and a bit. Ask a Whovian how they'd feel if NBC decided they were going to remake Doctor Who and I'd imagine the fear and anxiety levels would skyrocket. We correctly deduced that they'd use the current UK set, flying in contestants Fort Boyard style to make use of existing, and expensive, facilities so at least the zones and dome would look right. We also said it probably won't get past the pilot stage so it's a score draw for predictions. However the show is more than just an elaborate set, it's about having a host who does more than just throw contestants into games, it's about being fun and imaginative, it's about it entertaining us from start to finish and having us shouting at inept contestants on screen.