The Crystal Maze was a British game show created by Chatsworth Television and aired on Channel 4 in the UK from 15 February 1990 to 10 August 1995. The show had one series each year, with Richard O’Brien hosting the first four series and Ed Tudor-Pole taking over for the last two. Each episode lasted an hour, including commercial breaks.
Initially, the show was meant to be a British adaptation of the French program Fort Boyard, created by Jacques Antoine. However, due to the unavailability of the French set, British producer Malcolm Heyworth reimagined the show, incorporating themed zones to maintain visual interest.
The series took place in “The Crystal Maze,” which consisted of four distinct “zones” representing different times and places. A team of six contestants faced various challenges to earn “time crystals.” Each crystal awarded the team five seconds inside “The Crystal Dome,” the maze’s centerpiece, where they participated in the final challenge.
Constructing the maze cost £250,000 and it spanned the area of two football fields. At its peak, the show was Channel 4’s most-watched program, drawing between 4 and 6 million viewers regularly. In both 2006 and 2010, it was voted the “greatest UK game show of all time” by readers of UKGameshows.com, which described it as “a highly ambitious, high-risk show that paid off handsomely.”