Gladiators

GB

Reality Documentary
English     6.5     1992     GB

Overview

Gladiators is a British television entertainment series, produced by LWT for ITV, and broadcast between 10 October 1992 and 1 January 2000. It is an adaptation of the American format American Gladiators. The success of the British series spawned further adaptations in Australia and Sweden. The series was revived in 2008, before again being cancelled in 2009. The series was originally presented by John Fashanu and Ulrika Jonsson, however, Fashanu was replaced by Jeremy Guscott in 1997. Guscott left the series in 1998, and subsequently, Fashanu returned for the final series in 1999. The series was refereed by John Anderson and the timekeepers over the show's run were Andrew Norgate, Derek Redmond and Eugene Gilkes. John Sachs was the show's commentator, and the series was accompanied by its own group of cheerleaders, known as G-Force. Despite being made by London Weekend Television, all episodes of Gladiators, International Gladiators, the second series of The Ashes and the first series of The Springbok Challenge were recorded at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. The first series of The Ashes and the second series of the The Springbok Challenge, however, were filmed on the sets of the Australian and South African versions of the shows respectively. The series also spawned a version for children, entitled Gladiators: Train 2 Win, which was broadcast on CITV between 1995 and 1998.

Similar

The Generation Game was a British game show produced by the BBC in which four teams of two competed to win prizes. The programme was first broadcast in 1971 under the title Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game and ran until 1982, and again from 1990 until 2002. The show was based on the Dutch TV show Een van de acht, "One of the Eight", the format devised in 1969 by Theo Uittenbogaard for VARA Television. Mrs. Mies Bouwman - a popular Dutch talk show host and presenter of the show - came up with the idea of the conveyor belt. She had seen it on a German programme and wanted to incorporate it into the show. Another antecedent for the gameshow was 'Sunday Night at the London Palladium' on ATV, which had a game called Beat the Clock, taken from an American gameshow. It featured married couples playing silly games within a certain time to win prize money. This was hosted by Bruce Forsyth from 1958, and he took the idea with him when he went over to the BBC. During the 1970s, gameshows became more popular and started to replace expensive variety shows. Creating new studio shows was cheaper than hiring a theatre and paying for long rehearsals and a large orchestra, and could secure a similar number of viewers. With less money for their own productions, a gameshow seemed the obvious idea for ITV. As a result many variety performers were recruited for gameshows. The BBC, suffering poor ratings, decided to make its own gameshow. Bill Cotton, the BBC's Head of Light Entertainment, believed that Bruce Forsyth was best for the job. For years, The Generation Game was one of the strong shows in the BBC's Saturday night line-up, and became the number one gameshow on British television during the 1970s, regularly gaining over 21 million viewers. However, things were about to change. LWT, desperate to end the BBC's long-running ratings success on a Saturday night, offered Forsyth a chance to change channel to host The Big Night.

More info
The Generation Game
1971