Rating as one of the best things ever put out on ITV - yes I am a BBC snob - I never got to see it as much as I would have liked, as initially I never got home from school early enough, and then I was at university for a large chunk of its run.
Various things stick in the memory though. The fact that to conceal the fact that the young adventurer was actually doing his dungeoneering in a bare green screened studio, he was forced to wear "The Helmet of Truth" - essentially a bucket with horns on it, as can be seen here;
The bearded, slightly psychopathic looking chap here is Hugo Myatt as Treguard, the guide, the dungeonmaster, much given to saying things like "Life force is becoming critical" and "But team, where is the trumpet to blow down the Walls of Jericho?". He would sit with the other members of the team, three classroom spods with pencils and paper who would shout "FORWARD! LEFT! LEFT! NO LEFT!" like someone playing a ZX81 text only adventure with a voice recognition system. They also had to cast spells, getting the spelling right, as some kind of educational sop to the "quality television" brigade. The watching kids, of course, thought this was a load of pointless bullshit getting in the way of the action.
And all the while, as the be-bucketed one struggled to get a key in a lock, or dispose of a troll, thumping heartbeat music would sound ominously, and a graphic of a face would appear in the corner of the screen. This would slowly disintegrate into a scary looking skull with bits of meat on it as the lifeforce ran out, always reminding me of the life indicator in the old Spectrum game "Atic Atac".
The show ran its course, as they always do, as even with some location footage mixed in and some updated graphics Knightmare began to look underpowered compared to the latest in Snezzy Megasony home video game technology. However, the charm of this and the earlier BBC2 "The Adventure Game" is unmatchable to any retro low tech lover like me!
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