I have a confession to make. Despite all of my careful artifices to maintain my image as an intellectual giant (keep down the laughter at the back please) I have a dreadful fetish for bad TV. I don’t mean rubbish like Home and Away (source of many of society’s ills if you ask me) or Neighbours (never the same since Daphne left) but shows like Cheaters, Cops, those car chase shows, Wife Swap and really bad American reality TV. I need to clarify that I don’t like reality shows like Dancing With the Minor Celebrities, Australia So You Think You Can’t Make a Fool of Yourself on National Television or Australian Idiot – where record companies try to strengthen their flagging sales by making some karaoke quality singer a candidate to appear on the aforementioned dancing program and providing many cross-promotion opportunities for their host channel.
It was with great delight that I embraced the news that Channel 7 would be reviving Gladiators. I loved the original series in the 1990s. It was so bad that it was good. I am sure you know the format. Ordinary people appear on the show to complete in a series of challenges and win money. In order to get their hands on the folding stuff they must compete against a group of body building fitness fanatics with silly names – The Gladiators. On the old series we had gladiators with names such as Vulcan and Condor. The entertainment came in the form of the thrills and spills and bumps and scrapes that the plebiscites endured at the hands of the steroid quaffing, pumped up Gladiators.
It was loads of fun and I highly recommend that you watch the new series starting on Channel 7 soon.
