It is Saturday night and you are sitting cross-legged on the floor with a ham and pineapple oven pizza and a big cold glass of supermarket-brand cola. You are warm with the fresh clean glow of a bath and your nose is pressed close to the TV for Gladiators: Ulrika Jonsson’s otherworldly charisma, that barking Scottish referee, oiled biceps and unitards, Wolf. Or: hold on, wait, no. It’s 2024 now. Gladiators is back (Sat, 5.50pm, BBC One), and it still rules: Bradley Walsh’s otherworldly charisma, Mark Clattenburg as the referee, intricately tattooed biceps and unitards, Viper. Time has passed and the pizza has gone cold but Gladiators remains the same. Some things in the world are good.
I have to say that, despite the disorientating move from ITV to BBC, the latest Gladiators reboot (there was one on Sky in 2008 but we don’t need to talk about that) is a phenomenal success, a modern update with just the right portion of nostalgia baked in. The athletes all have good old-fashioned Gladiator names – Athena, Sabre, Apollo, Bionic – and jog into the foam-finger-and-flashbang-filled arena in perfect 90s-style tracksuits. The Travelator is back, as are the best old games – Duel! Hang Tough! – as well as some new twists. Footy commentator Guy Mowbray is on comms. The whole thing absolutely zips along. The contenders are great and bustling with personality – Britain has spent the last three decades creating an army of cheerful gym rats, and they are ready to show how good they are by running up a hill that is trying to run against them. But wow, watching it is like being transported back in time: I feel as if I could get a Freddo for 10p, or get suspended from school for bleaching my hair like Gazza, or care about Blur. It’s exhilarating.
Our Gladiators, then. Giant is like if they put Ben White on performance-enhancing drugs instead of breastmilk. Electro has palpable “Müller advert” energy. Nitro is in more boys’ group chats than any other person on Earth. Your parents are going to have an enormous row when your mum finds what your dad was trying to search on the iPad about Comet. Steel looks like he had to choose between this and a third-week exit on The Apprentice, and thankfully he chose to wield the pugil stick. If she was born in a different time, Fury has the vibe of someone chosen fifth to join a Pop Idol-era girlband. Legend is going to go one of two ways: beloved British TV star with a 40-year career, or has his Instagram DMs leaked by a tabloid and has to rebrand as a golf coach. Dynamite was born in 2003. Apollo wants to call you into a meeting room for a quick chat, nothing to worry about, nah you don’t need a union rep. I’m not saying anything about Diamond because she looks as if she could rip a car door off and hit me over the head with it. Primary schools across the country are going to have assemblies telling them all to stop “pretending to be Viper and trying to kick each other in the head”. I can’t believe there are more: Athena (keeps taking Local Legend badges off you on Strava), Phantom (someone is genuinely going to go to prison for a graphic thirst tweet they send about him), Sabre (Scottish), Fire (is one day going to write a million-selling children’s book about the power of sport). Bionic looks the most like he’s from the 90s so he might spiritually be my favourite. All of them are very charming and nice (well, not Viper, but that’s his bit) and magnanimous in defeat or victory. They say positive things to the contenders – “Hope you make it to the quarter-finals!” – and there’s a wholesome Locker Room Cam where they discuss how difficult each round was. But other than that, it’s basically beat-for-beat the same show as 1992: even the ripping theme tune is intact.
If Gladiators has one misstep, it’s the presenting team. I am British and I am human, therefore I love Bradley Walsh on The Chase, but as nepo babies go I find his son Barney a flavourless dupe of his father and, crucially, quite sexless. Gladiators, at its peak, was a heroic arena-based kids’ show that secretly undulated with sexual frisson, and no part of me feels that Barney Walsh is willing to explode his life to have a six-week affair with Sabre. This feels like an opportunity missed. Get AJ Odudu in for series two and we might have the best show in the world on our hands. Put the oven on and the cola in the fridge. We are back.
