Gladiators (1995 Australian TV series)

Gladiators is an Australian television series which aired on Saturday nights on the Seven Network from 29 April 1995 until 12 October 1996 almost consecutively for eighteen months.In July 2023, following the BBC’s revival of the British version, the show was confirmed to return for the second time, set to be revived by Warner Bros. Television Studios[1][2] and began broadcasting on Network Ten on 15 January 2024, hosted by Beau Ryan and Liz Ellis, but was cancelled in May later that year due to a lack of audience.[3][4] The premise of the show involves permanent competitors called "Gladiators" being put up against one-time-only "Challengers" in several different events which tests both physical and mental capabilities.After this, each pair then competes against each other in The Eliminator, an obstacle course, of which any points they have won previously go towards time for a head start on their opponent.The events featured in the first series were Atlaspheres, Duel, Gauntlet, Hang Tough, Hit & Run, Powerball, Pyramid, Suspension Bridge, Tilt, and the Wall.This could be achieved with either an offensive or a defensive strategy, although some challengers were disqualified if they made no attacking move towards the gladiator.The challenger's task is to reach the gladiator's platform by swinging between the rings, scoring ten points if successful.If the challenger manages to hang on for the entire 60 seconds regardless if he/she knocks the gladiator, and reaches the fourth row of rings (painted red) but not the opposite platform, they score 5 points.The course comprised a snake beam, hand ladder, wire bridge, two web traps, a high and low wall and a sprint finish.Because of their weight advantage, the gladiators had the harder job of having to tilt their table back in order to get any leverage on the rope.In the original series the course consisted of padded hurdles of varying heights, a rope climb, monkey bars (a hand bike for male challengers during Season 2–3), running across spinning logs, climbing up a cargo net, going down a flying fox, walking across a balancing beam, running up a travelator which is going in the opposite direction, then after that, the first challenger to swing on a tarzan rope through the crate paper banner at the finish line is the winner of the episode.featured some of the Gladiators as special guests including Flame, Storm, Commando, Predator, Glacier, Vulcan as well as Mike Whitney, the referee during the second and third series.On 9th August 2023, Gladiators was featured as a contestant speciality subject on TV Show “Hard Quiz”.Once the gladiators and challengers had been chosen, filming of all the episodes for this new season took place from 6 January 2008 to 10 February 2008 at The Dome, Sydney Showground, New South Wales.