Saturday 2 January 2010

"Temporal disruption imminent!", Full Episode of CITV's "Knightmare

Knightmare: Season 1 - Episode 1 (Part 1/3)



The very first episode of, shall we say, the ground breaking "Knightmare", a fantasy children's Gameshow, taking inspiration from role-playing games like "Dungeons and Dragons". The Youtube user has uploaded every episode of EVERY season, 1-8. A mouth-watering prospect for all fans of the show. I am still struggling on Season 2! I say ground breaking, as it it was one of the first TV programmes to administer 3D computer graphics. It's hard to believe the show attracted 4-5 million viewers at it's peak in 1991 and 1992.

So we had 1 team of 4 kids at a time, set in the Dungeon Master Treguard's (Hugo Myatt) domain. 3 of the them would stay to give the other one orders, spell-casting and directions, who would become the dugeoneer, and travel a fantasy dungeon world, completely in a 3D world. The boy/girl on foot wouldn't see anything, where he wears an over-sized Viking's helmet and can only see objects directly below him, to pick them up. Even if he too his hat off, all he would see is the fantasy character actors and giant blue screens. It's fun to watch the slightly thicker teams as they try to solve riddles or which item to pick up, while an aggrevated Treguard's gives out hints. Season to season, there are changes in the 3D-world make-up, but in the same season, it's not always the same rooms the many teams confront. As they make their way to level 3, they come across many different characters like the Riddling Gravitas the mere Level 1 Wall Monster, Merlin, Cedric the Mad Monk (who looks like "Wolf" from "The Gladiators"), Folly the jovial jester you wanted to punch, a depressed Goblin, and not forgetting Mogdred, Lord Fear and later Treguard assistants Pickle the Elf and Arabian Princess Majida.

The show lasted from 1987-1994. The show wasn't even axed for poor ratings, it was because CITV wanted to target a younger child audience, the 6-10's, and believed older children and teens were turning to videogames and satellite TV in their droves. This was probably the beginning of the mainstream channel's rather bullish and somewhat ignorant attitude to children's programme, even the BBC, and we all know the downhill slump CITV went through, living in this day and age. No fresh money and ideas, and now all on a shoe-string budget of repeats from their "heyday"!

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