Knightmare is a British children's adventure game show, created by Tim Child and broadcast over eight series on CITV from 7 September 1987 to 11 November 1994. The general format of the show consists of a team of four children – one who takes on the game, and three acting as their guide and advisers – attempting to complete a quest within a fantasy medieval environment, traversing a large dungeon and using their wits to overcome puzzles, obstacles and the unusual characters they meet along the journey.
The show is most notable for its use of blue screen chroma key, an idea Child utilised upon seeing it being put to use in weather forecasts at the time the programme began, as well as its use of virtual reality interactive gameplay on television and the high level of difficulty faced by every team. Broadcast to high viewing figures throughout its original run, it garnered a cult status amongst fans since its final television episode in 1994. It was revived for a one-off special by YouTube in August 2013.
Format
Each run of the game involves a team of four children, aged around 11–16, and focuses on the same format. One member takes on the game in person, referred to as the "Dungeoneer", but are blinded to their surroundings by the "Helmet of Justice" – a headpiece that blocks their field of vision to just around their feet. The other three act as their advisers, guiding them around, giving them advice to solving puzzles, and making notes on the information they receive. Once the Dungeoneer is ready, they are sent off on their quest. In most series, this requires the team to choose which quest they will undertake, whereupon the action takes place within a blue screen chroma key studio used to display a partly computer-generated, partly hand-drawn fantasy dungeon – only the viewers and the advisers can see this. In some cases, filming of a run takes place in real locations, where the viewpoint of these scenes is done to appear to be from that of the Dungeoneer's. The rest of the team remains in the main studio fashioned as an antechamber of "Knightmare Castle", and give instructions and details of a location to the Dungeoneer, much in the same style of text-based computer games which rely on descriptions and commands rather than visuals. An example could be that a room has a key for a locked door within, so the advisers would describe the room to the Dungeoneer and then instruct them to move towards the key, pick it up, and use it on the door to exit the room.
The objective of the game is for the team to complete three levels of a specially made dungeon designed for them. Each team faces a new dungeon of a different design, but with similar features recurring during a series. Each level consists of a number of rooms, with some having puzzles, obstacles and challenges that must be overcome. The rooms may also have various inhabitants – some will help, while others will either hinder the Dungeoneer unless they give them something they require, or attempt to stop them and end their game. In some cases, the team faces more than one exit and must choose which way to go. Every dungeon has a selection of objects, some of which will help to solve puzzles or get past certain inhabitants, while others are decoys. There are also magic spells – a single word that can be used to solve puzzles and overcome hazards and dangerous inhabitants. Spells require an adviser to spell out the word correctly (e.g. if the spell is Light, then the adviser needs to say L-I-G-H-T).
Each team is required to complete their game within a time-limit, which is represented by an on-screen animated lifeforce meter for the Dungeoneer that gradually depletes. The meter is only ever seen by the viewers, but the advisers receive clear hints about its status when they need to proceed. Since the amount of time is limited, the team must help the Dungeoneer reach checkpoints within the dungeon and instruct them to pick up a food item and put it in a knapsack given to them before they begin their run, which fully restores lifeforce. If the team make mistakes that allows the Dungeoneer to be attacked from minor monsters or hazards, they incur a time penalty which reduces the amount of time they have to complete the game, described as taking "damage" to their lifeforce. If the Dungeoneer runs out of lifeforce, the game ends. The game is also over if the team makes a bad decision and takes a wrong route into a dead end, or if the Dungeoneer is "killed" by an enemy character, monster or trap or "falls" into a pit. The appearance of the lifeforce meter varied during the course of the show's history:
Up until the end of the fifth series, the meter was a computer-animated image of an adventurer wearing a helmet. As lifeforce depletes, pieces of the helmet disappears from the meter, then the skin of the adventurer, and then the skull, until finally the eyes fly past the camera. The background color of the image also changes accordingly – green when healthy (helmet), amber when moderate (skin), and red when critical (skull). A remake of this meter was used in the one-off YouTube special. In the sixth and seventh series, the meter was represented by an animated picture of a walking knight, which loses pieces of its armour over time to reveal a skeleton that eventually collapses. In the final series, the meter was represented by a picture of a pie, where the slices reappear once the Dungeoneer puts food in their knapsack.
If the team manages to complete all three levels, they are awarded with their prize, which changed over the years of the show's history. Unlike most other children's shows, Knightmare had no qualms about having a very high difficulty level, and as a result, only eight teams managed to win the game over its eight series. Regardless of whether a team wins or fails, they leave the show once their game is over, and a new team takes their place. This continues until the final episode of the series, whereupon the last team playing in that episode will often always be given an impossible situation which they will fail, in order to allow the series to end. Since each episode is designed to be twenty-five minutes long, should a team's run exceed beyond an episode, editing is done to freeze the action towards the end, and then unfreeze at the beginning of the next episode (referred to in the series context as "temporal disruption"). Only twice in the entire series did temporal disruption coincide with the end of a quest (in series 2 and series 6 where both teams lost). The nature of the rolling gameplay being condensed into twenty-five minute episodes meant occasionally that the beginning of an episode would feature a team for a very short amount of time before they were eliminated. Conversely, some teams had barely started their quests when temporal disruption occurred.
Characters
A Saxon knight named Treguard of Dunshelm, was the dungeon master and was played by Hugo Myatt for the show's eight series. Information about his supposed background can be found in the related literature (see merchandise section). During the show, Treguard assisted the dungeoneer and the advisers, and also explained a team's cause of death whenever they died.
At first, Treguard directed the contestants on his own. However, from Series 4, Treguard had an assistant: Pickle the elf, played by David Learner, and (from Series 7) after Pickle had "gone back to the forest", Majida, a princess and genie of Arabian descent played by Jackie Sawiris. Majida originally said her name was "Daughter of the Setting Moon Whose Eyes are Like Daggers in the Hearts of Men Who Ride the Great Caravan of the Sultan". Both assistants gave additional support to teams, in particular younger adventurers who may have been nervous at the start of their quests.
During the early series, Treguard was portrayed as a neutral character, most notably between Series 1 and 3. At the start of Episode 14 of Series 3 (when no team had yet completed that series' dungeon), he went as far as to say "we're celebrating an unbeaten record", apparently siding against the dungeoneers. However, from Series 5 onwards, there was a clear distinction made between 'The Powers that Be' and 'The Opposition', against which Treguard became less neutral, and more inclined to aid the dungeoneers to complete their quest. Aside from Treguard, no other characters were featured throughout the entire run. Only warlock (later wizard and then mage) Hordriss and palace jester Motley would have long runs on the show, both being introduced in season 3 and remaining until the series end.
The formal division of characters between The Powers that Be and The Opposition meant later series started to feature more advanced story lines which would be hinted at in earlier quests and developed more as the seasons progressed. Examples of this include the alliance between Lord Fear and Aesandre in series 5, which backfires when she freezes the entire dungeon at the end of the season after her powers have been boosted by her ally. Season 6 saw Lord Fear attempt another alliance with Witch Queen Greystagg which she eventually rejected. As a result, Lord Fear summoned a Red Dragon to destroy the dungeon (which Treguard and Pickle ultimately foiled with a lightning rod the final team of that season retrieved), but this plan also failed, leading to the destruction of Mount Fear. In season 7, the enmity between Lord Fear and Greystagg developed further after it was revealed he had destroyed her home. Greystagg helps the final team retrieve a magic hammer to stop a giant troll from destroying Knightmare castle. In the final season, Greystagg had been replaced with the sorceress Maldame and both she and Lord Fear fought for control over an underwater domain called the Great Mire. Lord Fear sent another red dragon to destroy her, but the ultimate outcome of this was unresolved as the final quest ended. Over the course of the series, Treguard became known for his catchphrase "Ooh, nasty!", regularly used just after a team had died. Intended only as a passing remark, this was originally an ad lib by Myatt. Actors that auditioned for the show were required to demonstrate spontaneity and flexibility. Occasionally, a team's actions would require quick thinking by Hugo Myatt and/or the other actors in order for the gameplay to follow the planned path.
In its early series, Knightmare lacked a single major antagonist or 'baddie'. Originally, Treguard was specifically a neutral character, neither on the side of good nor evil. The closest there was to a main villain was Mogdred (portrayed by John Woodnutt), but his primary duty was (according to wizard Merlin in the penultimate episode of Series 2) to "scare you into making a mistake", though he did kill two dungeoneers, one in Series 2 and another early in Series 4. In Series 5 (1991), however, changes were made. Most of the characters were split into two sides: the righteous "Powers that Be", and the villainous "Opposition", the leader of which was Lord Fear played by Mark Knight. By this time, Treguard's stance had now fully evolved into that of a strictly good character.
In 2014, Hugo Myatt lent his "Treguard" voice to the heavy metal band Evil Scarecrow's album Galactic Hunt for the track Enter the Knightmare, whose lyrics are based on the 1980s TV show.
Production