There are many taxonomies one can use to classify television shows, but among the most effective binaries is splitting the small-screen oeuvre into “shows that would be ruined by being stoned” and “shows that would be improved by being stoned”. Gladiators – a Nineties fever dream of glittering spandex and rippling muscles – is firmly in the latter group. But can this camp icon, which is being revived on BBC One, survive the increasingly po-faced world of 21st-century television? Or has the distinctive mixture of performative homoeroticism and technicolour drama soured in the two decades it’s been off our screens?
Gone are Ulrika Jonsson, John Fashanu and Jeremy Guscott; in are the Walshes, Bradley and Barney. New audiences might be unfamiliar with the older roster (“Better times,” Bradley informs Barney, “in many ways”), but they’ll be au fait with the banal patter of the Walsh duo (if you’re wondering how accomplished a presenter Barney Walsh is, it’s worth noting that he has yet to be gifted a presenting gig that doesn’t involve his dad). But what will be familiar is the show’s basic premise. Contestants (two men, two women) compete over a series of randomised trials, battling the various Gladiators in an effort to gain an advantage in the final head-to-head race, the Eliminator. Along the way, the salt of the earth contestants will be routinely contrasted with the preening prima donna figures of the Gladiators, who fling themselves at the contestants in a vainglorious effort to stop them scoring points. It is all rather like the public embarrassment of Takeshi’s Castle meets the pantomime quality of WWE wrestling.
