Gladiators is a British sports entertainment game show, produced by London Weekend Television, presented by Ulrika Jonsson and narrated by John Sachs, and originally broadcast on ITV.

Based upon the American television programme American Gladiators, the show sees four contestants, split into pairs by gender, compete in a series of physically challenging events against the show's resident "Gladiators", before competing against their respective contestant in one final event.

All contestants seeking to participate in a series were screened and required to undergo a series of rigorous fitness tests before they were selected to take part: Gladiators Entry Test All of the events they faced were designed to test their strength and endurance, with the majority of these having seen them compete against not only each other but against a Gladiator chosen to face off against them; the exception was the final event, the Eliminator – an assault course upon which each pair of contestants competed against each other directly without hindrance from the Gladiators, in order to determine that episode's male and female winners.

Winning contestants, who began in the heats, moved on to quarter-finals and semi-finals, until only four were left for the grand final, in which the winners were crowned the champions of the series for their respective gender.

Because the game show relied on sports-like events for challenging contestants, Gladiators required a referee to oversee the competition.

For this role, production hired on John Anderson, whose background in sports coaching made him perfect for the task at hand.

While he maintained and enforced the rules, he was accompanied by an assistant who kept official count of the event's time; the role was primarily filled by the associate producer Andrew Norgate.

The titular "Gladiators" for the show were groups of men and women, many being bodybuilders and athletes, auditioned by the production staff to provide an additional challenge for contestants – often with notable differences to them in terms of height and weight.

The most significant retirement was that of Helen O'Reilly (Panther) – during an event that was televised, she suffered a serious accident when she fell head first onto crash mats, receiving severe neck and back injuries; while she recovered and later returned, she was forced to retire when the effects of the accident caused problems.

Highlights from these shows were shown in a preview episode to the 1993 series, and whilst footage of him playing was included, there was no specific reference to Bullit (or Flame, Phoenix, and Hawk).

[11] The final set of live shows saw the introduction of Ace, Rebel, and Rio as Gladiators; all of whom would go on to appear in that years' main televised series.

Jet would suffer an injury during Pyramid, in which she fell awkwardly trapping nerves in her neck[13] and she retired from competition after this event.

In 1997 and 1998, a short segment of Gladiators was introduced to the Royal Tournament event at Earls Court after London Weekend Television won the broadcasting rights from the BBC.

The second release of figures included Trojan (B815), Hunter (B816), Zodiac (B817), and Panther (B818), as well as revised versions of Jet (B800) and Wolf (B802).

These consisted of a revised version of Hunter, and figures of Hawk (United States), Terminator (Finland), and Dynamite (Russia).

Notably, many of the moulds for the Hornby series were shipped over to Australia, and reused for a range of Australian Gladiators figures.

Two audio CD and audio cassette tape compilations were released during the early years of the show, containing tracks such as "Holding Out for a Hero", "We Are Family", and "The Boys Are Back in Town", as well as the instrumental music used during events, and a three-minute version of the programme's opening theme song.

The following VHS releases were available: By 1998, viewing figures began to fall, and despite efforts to improve the programme with changes, Gladiators was axed on 15 February 1999.

"[31] However, LWT reached an agreement by this time to film four extra episodes for ONdigital, the recently launched digital terrestrial television platform.

The episodes were then shown nationally on the ITV network over the Christmas period, across four successive Saturday nights from 11 December 1999 to 1 January 2000.

Produced by the company Shine, the show underwent a major change in its format due to the channel's advertising requirements, reducing the number of events featured in each episode, while some of the original events, like Duel, were modified due to the arena studio used for the revival.

[1] The second revival eventually began broadcasting on 13 January 2024, achieving very strong viewing figures for its opening episodes, and received positive feedback from critics and fans since its launch.

[37] Owing to the surprising success of the revival, the BBC has already announced plans to make another series in 2024, which would be set to air early 2025.