Fort Boyard is a French game show created by Jacques Antoine that was first broadcast on 7 July 1990 (as Les Clés de Fort Boyard, shortened to Fort Boyard from the second series in 1991) and is popular to this day. It has been re-made around the world, successfully in many countries over a 25-year period.
Set and filmed on the real fortress of the same name in France, the programme appears similar to The Crystal Maze (which was created as an alternative format by Antoine for Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, after Fort Boyard itself was unavailable to film in because of its then ongoing refurbishment during 1988–89). Channel 5 later bought the rights to Fort Boyard and made their own British version, using the now refurbished set, which aired from 16 October 1998 to 29 December 2001 for four series. It was briefly revived by Challenge in 2003 for one series and the show later returned to UK television in 2012 under a new format aired on CITV, Fort Boyard: Ultimate Challenge.
In both programmes the contestants have to complete challenges to win prize money. However, while The Crystal Maze varies the type of games quite considerably, Fort Boyard tends to focus mainly on physical and endurance challenges. Although Fort Boyard was something of a pioneer in the area of game show fear and adventure, later programmes such as Fear Factor have pushed things even further, requiring Fort Boyard to react and adapt with new twists and games, including a couple of seasons in which the contestants spent the night in the Fort (this was particularly popular in the French and Russian versions).
Fort Boyard is the most exported French TV format and the fourth most exported adventure-style game show format in the world after Wipeout, Fear Factor and Survivor.