ere’s a confession, and not a particularly great one for somebody paid to write about television: I have struggled with TV under lockdown. It has been difficult to find anything that fits my mood at any given time. I don’t have the energy to sit through a brave, new complicated series, but at the same time I struggle to see the point of anything deliberately lightweight. My viewing history for the last few months is essentially a pile of shows that were picked up and quickly dropped. So it is with some relief that I have found something I can watch. Something that fits perfectly into the part of my brain that I want to switch off. I can watch it on my own or with my kids. It’s new. It’s silly enough to be diverting, but requires almost no participation on my part. It is Netflix’s Floor Is Lava, and I’m lucky to have it. This is how I imagine the commissioning process for Floor Is Lava went. Someone walked into the Netflix office and found somebody in charge. They said the words “Floor is lava” out loud, and, two seconds, later walked out with a commission for a 10-part series. It’s the sort of idea that makes you angry for how obvious it is. It’s been staring us in the face for decades, but nobody thought to make it until now. In essence, Floor Is Lava is a souped-up version of the game you played as kids, where you have to traverse a room without touching the floor; except here the “floor” is 80,000 gallons of bubbling, bright-red water. If you fall from an obstacle, you’re submerged and out of the game. It’s Takeshi’s Castle. It’s Total Wipeout. It’s The Crystal Maze. It’s Ninja Warrior. It teeters right on the line that separates stupidity from genius. Everybody should be watching it. Every episode is the same, with just enough surface-level changes to keep you watching. Three teams of three people have to get from one side of a room to another by clinging to walls and leaping from boxes and dangling from ropes. In episode one the room is explorer themed, with pyramids, sarcophagi and cargo nets. Episode two is more traditionally furnished, with a bed, sofas and trunks. I cannot tell you the theme of episode three because by that point my kids had caught wind of it and stood entranced shoulder to shoulder in front of the screen, blocking my view. If the contestants fall, and they usually fall, they fail. If by some triumph of the human spirit they all make it, they win a prize. One of the genius aspects of Floor Is Lava is just how small the prize is. The winners get $10,000 between them – which works out at less than £3,000 each – and a crappy gift shop lava lamp that’s listlessly tossed at them by the host, Rutledge Wood. The other great thing about Floor Is Lava is a sleight of hand. When a contestant falls into the “lava”, we never see them come up for air. They sink beneath the surface and that’s the end of them. It’s the simplest edit, but it introduces a truly berserk level of jeopardy into the game. There is a very strong chance that it will permanently traumatise your children, who may not possess a particularly strong grasp of modern post-production techniques, but it elevates the show tenfold. More than anything, Floor Is Lava is fun. It won’t win any awards. It won’t make any end-of-year lists. But as a piece of pure entertainment, it succeeds fully. When you watch it, you’ll wish you were playing it. I’m desperate for a second season because I want to fully exploit my position and try out the course for the spurious purposes of an article. If Netflix executives have any sense, the first thing they will do post-Covid-19 is open up a bunch of experiential Floor Is Lava centres so the public can try it for themselves. Floor Is Lava is great. It has saved lockdown.