BFI Mediatheques

[Canadanne]

Did you know there are five BFI Mediatheques around the UK where you can view an episode of Knightmare free of charge?

BFI Southbank, London

Derby QUAD

Cambridge Central Library

Wrexham Library

Discovery Museum, Newcastle

Collection: The Kids Are Alright

A celebration of long lost teatimes, Sunday afternoons and Saturday mornings - the best of British children's television from the 1950s to the 1990s.

Knightmare (1988)

This sword-and-sorcery game show was at the cutting edge of computer graphics, though video games were later blamed for a decline in traditional children's TV in the 90s.

[Mystara]

That's interesting to know.

I wonder how they obtained the episodes.

[JamesA]

Thanks for the heads up - I went to BFI Southbank earlier on today to investigate. You can use the Mediatheque there for up to 2 hours, and the guy who set me up whilst explaining how to use it also stated that all 2,000+ programmes on the Mediatheque database (including Knightmare) are from the BFI National Archives, so that should answer Mystara's question.

As for the episode of Knightmare featured on the Mediatheque itself, yes its from an 1988 episode but I won't spoil things by saying exactly which episode - I'd rather that people headed over to the Mediatheque themselves to find out which episode it is. All I will say is that the Mediatheque description put a strong emphasis on the word "hapless"....

If you get a bit of spare time after watching the Knightmare episode I strongly recommend searching for Moondial - another children's TV programme that dates back to 1988, and whilst it doesn't have the adventure gameshow element, it resembles almost everything else of Knightmare in terms of chilling fear factor and darkened edginess.