Gladiators Celebrity Special review – shiny, happy, deeply predictable fun

Celebrity … ready! Gladiator … ready! Anyone up for starting another year hankering after the 1990s … ready! Because the reboot of Gladiators is back. Again. This time, in a one-off special to get us in the mood for the second series (which, fear not, will be more of the same), four celebs whip the Sheffield stadium into a foam-fingered frenzy and induce 16 ultra ripped and unitarded folk to flex their biceps and say mildly threatening things. Or, in Viper’s case, keep stumm and look really cross. Look, I can only apologise if this intro feels formulaic. I’m afraid this is what a close watch of Gladiators, which remains the ur-formulaic TV format, does to a critic. Especially one who came of age in the 90s. We can’t help it any more than the nation can help loving the sight of two fully grown humans going at each other on plinths with giant cotton buds.

First up is Rob Beckett (comedian, 38, from Bromley). He’s doing it for the slightly overweight dads watching at home and if he had a Gladiator name it would be Beaver. Because of his teeth. Which leads host Bradley Walsh, on typically smooth form, to corpse. Then there’s Joel Dommett (comedian and presenter, 39, from Bristol) who’s been training for this since he was nine and smacking his brother in the face with a broomstick. (His Gladiator name, on account of his asthma, would be Inhaler.) The female contenders are ex-BBC Breakfast presenter and triathlete Louise Minchin (55, from Chester), who gave up sport at 15, took it up again 35 years later, and is genuinely awe-inspiring; and comedian Ellie Taylor (40, from Brentwood), who deserves to win purely on the grounds that she gave birth eight months ago. At which point the pelvis of anyone who has had a baby will shudder at the thought of the Travelator.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first event is Collision, which leads to a taut joke about collagen from Walsh (his co-host and son Barney remains, I’m afraid, joke-free) and the risk of celebrities getting fat lips. Maybe you had to be there. Anyway, in this new event added for the reboot, the contender gets 60 seconds to race across a bridge and throw balls in a net while four Gladiators fly in to throw them off course. Steel, Bionic, Viper and Apollo bring Beckett down fast. Dommett fares better. “There are legs coming towards you like trees, and the waft of fake fan is unbelievable,” he says afterwards. Which goes some way to explaining the strange potency of Gladiators. It may be ridiculous, but the thought of actually competing in it is terrifying.

Onwards to Duel, the one on the plinths with the pugil sticks that has stuck in the addled middle-aged mind the most and, like a Wham! song, never disappoints. Beckett is spanked repeatedly on the bottom by Legend. Legend apologises afterwards for always thinking of him as a mediocre comedian until he saw him trying to hit up there … and it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. As Basil Brush would have put it, BOOM BOOM!

Minchin describes Gauntlet, where the contenders have to clear five zones, each one guarded by a Gladiator, as “like running into a brick wall … and then the brick wall attacks you.” Again, ouch. And in Powerball, where they have to get as many balls in pods as possible while three Gladiators tackle them to the ground, Beckett, Dommett and even Walsh end up in the bin. What a fun start to the year! Even so, my favourite moment, and no I’m not proud of myself, comes after Minchin competes in Collision. Having scored a whopping eight points she walks away, trips on a mat, and goes flying. There’s a slo-mo replay, but I’m ashamed to admit I still rewound it and watched it again. Twice. You can take the girl out of the 1990s …

Which brings me to the vexed question of why 90s nostalgia has become a 2020s TV sub-genre and cultural habit all its own. Even I spent an entire morning laughing fondly at how abominable our Scottish accents were in that decade, largely because of the constant impressions we did of the original Gladiators referee, John Anderson, saying: “You will go on my first whistle. You will go on my second whistle.” I know, what a catchphrase!

And it’s not just the children of the 90s who are at it, either: my seven-year-old dances the Macarena in the school playground with her class every Friday afternoon. What is it, exactly, that we’re trying to get back to? To take 1992, the year Gladiators first came on our screens, as an example: the Tories won a fourth term, Black Wednesday happened, and the most upbeat soundtrack to the year was Shakespears Sister’s Stay. Hardly inspiring stuff. And yet, into the midst of that grey British fog charged the Gladiators with their bright pink Lycra and family-friendly insults. It was the shiny, happy, deeply predictable fun we needed. And, just as in every episode of Gladiators another one bites the dust, it seems we need it again.