‘We dialled up the superhero’: how Gladiators became the BBC’s biggest entertainment hit in years

The cast of the new series is more diverse and representative, reflecting a modern audience, but the reliance on Lycra remains. Photograph: Guy Levy/BBC

Do you feel the power of the Gladiators? Do you have the will and the skill?

Or if not, will you at least be humming along with its gleefully bombastic theme tune on Saturday evening, as the show reaches the final episode of its comeback series a mere 32 years after it first stormed on to British television?