"It's 'The Crystal Maze' for intelligent people..."
Warren joined us to open Episode Eleven as we were celebrating the long-awaited release on DVD of 'The Adventure Game'. It's one of those shows that perfectly summed up the TV landscape of the time, but if you attempt to describe to it anyone unfamiliar with it, you end up sounding really rather odd. So we'll merely point you towards the article and stick up some random screen shots instead.
Devised by the fertile mind of Patrick Dowling (who pops up at the BBC Pebble Mill studios in Series Two to welcome the contestants as well as the audience at home), it's a time capsule of TV design and technology.
It spans the years 1980 to 1986 and interested viewers should note the changing face of home computers used in the show. Yes, astonishingly there was once a time before even the BBC Micro.
Product placement is always a tricky area for Auntie Beeb and it's always amusing when someone has taken a marker pen to an Ever Ready battery in a vain attempt to disguise its distinctive blue shape.
There are all sorts of famous (and forgotten) names popping up over the course of the four series. Popular science people of the day make a good showing and it's lovely to see James Burke or Heinz Wolff taking it all seriously.
Sometimes the production team come up with such fiendishly complicated puzzles that even after a week in studio, most people would still be floundering around, hopelessly confused.
But a show that overestimates people's intelligence makes for a breath of fresh air these days. And the sheer strangeness of it all is very appealing, if your sense of humour is anything like mine.
"There's this planet, you see... and the ruler is called the Rangdo... He's a sort of dragon. When he talks to human beings he changes into Ian Messiter dressed in a velvet jacket. Then he becomes an aspidistra, though later on he's a teapot...
Oh, and there's an Australian bloke who talks backwards..."
No, on reflection, it's much better that you plunge into the DVDs yourselves... Even the fact that the odd episode is sourced from an offair copy (complete with some spectacular droput from time to time) is of note. Once upon a time, most of our copies of stuff looked like this...
Happy viewing! But beware The Vortex...
Doogy rev.
(By Andrew Trowbridge)
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