Gladiators made a triumphant return to Sky One tonight after an absence from our screens of over eight years.

Hosted by Kirsty Gallacher and Ian Wright, two far more accomplished presenters than Ulrika Jonsson and John Fashanu, the glossy production has a familiar “look and feel”, but due to a large soundstage rather than arena setting – which follows the lead of the American Gladiators original – it is more intimate than the ITV version.

Many of the tried and tested games remain, and another familiar face is “you will go on my first whistle” referee John Anderson.

The gladiator line-up is all-new.  Amongst them there’s a larger lady with the unfortunate name of ‘Battleaxe’ (Shirley Webb), a pretty-boy called ‘Spartan’ (Roderick Bradley), ‘Oblivion’ (Nicolas Aldis) the bad guy, a moody brunette called ‘Enigma’ (Jenny Pacey), ‘Predator’ (well-known athelete Du’aine Ladejo) and ‘Inferno’ (wrestler Jemma Palmer), whose fake tits look like they could pop at any moment.  Her name is easiest to remember because inferno rhymes with camel toe, and that’s something she also has on show. Uh, that rhymes too.

Watching in HD, it’s hard to decide how these new gladiators stack up against old favourites from the 1990’s such as Vogue (Suzanne Cox) and Jet (Diane Youdale) because now we can see their spots, stubble and shaving rashes (yes, on the girls) but it’s early days and favourites are sure to emerge.

One point of trivia; in the new series over in America, they’ve given their gladiators many of the same names as those in the UK’s original series, whereas we’ve pinched theirs, so don’t confuse the superlative UK Jet with the not-quite-so-hot American Jet (Monica Carlson) or the original American Ice (Lori Fetrick) with our rather rough-looking version (Caroline Pearce) 

Anyway, bottom line is that I really enjoyed the show.  Kirsty Gallacher and Ian Wright are great – Kirsty looks fantastic too – the games good and the competition fierce.  The hour seemed to fly by, which is always a good sign, so I’d predict a ratings winner for Sky and welcome return of an old favourite.

Tempest (Lucy Boggis) lines up for a spot of power ball.
Sky official website: http://gladiators.sky.com/