Many Knightmare fans have a particular fondness for its earlier years. One reason for this that is rarely dwelt upon is the startling array of accents of its competing teams.
It's usually something that escapes our notice, but the show began with ambitious geographic diversity.
The short opening season in 1987 featured three teams from the Yorkshire / Lancashire region, along with a team from Wales. Knightmare's first dungeoneer, David Campbell, brought Scottish heritage, along with a team from Bedfordshire.
By the end of the second season, teams from Scotland and the far north-east of England had taken part. By the halfway point of Knightmare's run, Wales, Scotland and the north-east had all been represented a second time.
After that is a different story altogether, as the show's contestant base drifted notably southwards.
The team from Tyne & Wear that opened the fourth season in 1990 was the most northerly point the show ever reached again - by over 100 miles.
A throwback to regions
There are aspects of the 1980s that seem nostalgic even of their own time, let alone ours.
The distinct accents of the Highlands and northern territories feel like a throwback to something more - to personality and regionality, to local community, to Hovis and milk adverts, to a sense of pending change.
Knightmare, like anything that spans almost a decade in length, reflected a modernising world.
The second half of the show's run became much more southern-centric. Far fewer teams took part from north of the Watford gap.
The show's final year ventured north of London's commuter belt on just one occasion - the late appearance of a team from Leicestershire.
Without that cameo, the average latitude of its contestants' hometowns would have been Woking in Surrey. The team from the East Midlands drags that up (slightly fortuitously) to north London.
Some stats
- Most northly: Uddingston, Glasgow (1989)
- Most southerly: Cornwall (1993)
- Most common: London (7 times); Leicester / St Albans (3 times each)
The average latitude of Knightmare’s eight seasons:
Why Knightmare went south
So, why did the show narrow its geographical horizons?
It can be explained in part by design. The introduction of Lord Fear as principal opponent heralded a shift from single room challenges to longer quests with broader story arcs.
By the sixth series, Knightmare needed just half the number of teams it had previously used in its second and third seasons.
Equally, the teams who had travelled furthest or across national borders during the show's early years didn't always perform particularly well.
A team from Sunderland that opened Series 2 in 1988 registered the shortest quest by airtime (albeit a little harshly), at under 10 minutes.
A team from the Glasgow suburbs that opened Series 3 in 1989 fared little better and even benefited from a let-off after an early mistake. No more were to follow from Scotland.
A team from Swansea in 1990 suffered Knightmare's most ignominious demise. No more players would follow from Wales either.
The show wasn't completely closed to looking further afield. The late Paul Boland and companions were set to become Knightmare's first contestants from Ireland in 1992 until bad fortune caused them to miss out.
But this seems to go against the grain rather than towards it.
Avast me hearties!
Accents were also a curious feature of Knightmare's character base.
In the show's early years, two Scottish actors were cast to play English roles (albeit Alec Westwood also had a brief stint as a Glaswegian guard), while an English actor played a Celt.
We had a cockney Jester, an unconvincing Viking, and a curiously Welsh dragon voiced by the Norfolk-based Clifford Norgate.
The north and the fractious Miners' Strike of the 1980s got their homage through Tom Karol's officious but generous mineworker, Bumptious.
The later years included a west-country barmaid, a pirate, a Scouse merchant, two Mediterranean characters juggled by Adrian Neil, and a crude but entertaining Oriental stall holder played by Mark Knight.
Accents weren't always lost on the cast either. During a final encounter scene in Series 7, Lord Fear mocks the pronunciation of Julie in her teammates' Staffordshire accents.
But for all of this, the variation among the contestants was largely gone by this stage. The movement in the geographical make-up of its teams makes it clear to see why.
The variety of regions and accents contributes heavily to the unique character of Knightmare’s early competitors, much as the more experienced gamers and role-players excelled in its later years.
And by making those early years seem more dated than they are, this fuels the strong wave of nostalgia that keeps the memories of the show so vividly alive.
