This year is shaping up to be the year of the game show reboot. ITV has already revived Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune and now the BBC has raided ITV’s vaults to bring back Gladiators. But unlike Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, US gameshows that have failed to make a mark on the British psyche, Gladiators has a hallowed place in our television iconography.
As such it probably needs no introduction, but for those perhaps too young to recall, the show involves men and women with comic-book superhero names like Diesel, Hawk and Warrior, their gym-sculpted bodies squeezed into Spandex as they take on members of the public in feats of strength and stamina (I’m not sure how much skill comes into it).
It was presented by Ulrika Jonsson throughout its original eight-year run (1992-2000) and garnered regular, now unimaginable audiences of 14 million. The BBC reboot is led by father-and-son double act Bradley and Barney Walsh in front of a large crowd gathered in the Sheffield Arena.
Overseeing games such as Duel, where they hit each other with what look like giant cotton buds, and Hang Tough (hanging from a rope, basically) is a former Premier League referee Mark Clattenburg. Match of the Day commentator Guy Mowbray describes the action.
The original Gladiators was appointment TV for all the family, the sweaty, scantily clad grapplers probably providing an erotic awakening for some younger viewers (a poster of Diane Youdale, as her alter ego Jet, was a fixture on teenage bedroom walls). For older viewers, it may have sparked fond memories of a different but essentially similar Saturday afternoon staple: professional wrestling.
And like televised wrestling, which always included several so-called “heels” for the audience to boo, Gladiators has its own “baddies”: Legend (“I’m a cross between Gandhi and David Hasselhoff”), who insults the contestants in a very un-Gandhi-like way, and the hard-staring Viper.
Indeed, the BBC is playing it safe by reviving the original DNA wholesale, including the same logo, the same, very 90s, theme song, and the same set. The whole thing feels like a time warp, which could be a strength or a weakness, depending on what sort of audience the Beeb is hoping to attract.
The “family audience” is, of course, an endangered species in these viewing-splintered times, while nostalgia tourists will no doubt sate their curiosity by tuning into Saturday’s opening programme. But will they stay?
Bradley and Barney Walsh certainly do their best, although having to almost shout their gags to be heard above the excitable crowd diminishes the duo’s charm. Meanwhile, the camp panto energy exuded by the Gladiators themselves might seem a tad tame and ridiculous to any younger viewers raised on the Marvel and DC universes.
And as is now obligatory, contestants come with an often moving back story (childhood leukemia overcome, for example), but the stakes feel so low in Gladiators that it’s hard to equate such adversity with the show’s glorified pillow fights.
A reboot has been tried and failed before, by Sky in 2008. For me, the new BBC Gladiators has stirred nostalgic memories – but for a different Saturday teatime BBC show.
Why did the broadcaster axe Total Wipeout? That gloriously silly show, in which civilians sent themselves up before taking on a genuinely testing obstacle course (their repeated failures openly but wittily mocked by commentators Amanda Byram and Richard Hammond) was great fun, only to mysteriously disappear from our screens in 2012. That’s a long time ago now, but its memory still feels fresher than the reality of this 90s Gladiators throwback.
