I’m sure there’s a Portuguese word which describes ‘enforced nostalgia for a thing you never enjoyed in the first place’. Whatever it is, it applies in spades to BBC1’s reboot of Gladiators, which we’re now told was one of the landmarks of 1990s Saturday TV entertainment but which I don’t recall fondly one bit, despite having a child who would have been just the right age to enjoy it.

What I do remember was the desperate contrivance of it all. The Fawn, I recall, was invited to go with our boy the Rat to write up a feature on the very first show and interview the stars. She came back traumatised. Her head throbbed with Queen’s excruciating ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ thumping on auto-repeat; she kept having flashbacks to nightmare visions of giant foam hands thrusting towards the girders of some remote, garishly lit indoor arena; worst of all, though, was the unutterable, grinding boredom. From this threadbare material she was expected to write up a piece hailing Gladiators as the next big thing.

All TV is lies and artifice. But with Gladiators it’s just so transparent

Which, of course, it duly became. But that’s more a reflection of how the hype machine works than on the product’s intrinsic qualities. Each show, if you study it carefully, is a Leni Riefenstahl-esque masterclass in manufactured excitement: the jets of flame from the arena floor, the various gladiators prancing forth then pausing to deliver their rehearsed teeth snarls and beef hunk poses (Blue Steel, Le Tigre, Magnum, etc.), cameras tracking across an excitable audience brandishing homemade placards celebrating gladiators they don’t know from Adam.

Just think about that last detail for a moment. Sure, given a few more episodes, it’s likely that the latest batch of Gladiators will become as a big a household name as their 1990s predecessors Wolf, Cobra, Nightshade, et al. But when that first episode was recorded nobody, save possibly their mums, would have recognised Bionic, Fury, Viper and so on because they had yet to be reified as TV celebrities. Basically, they were just a bunch of gym bunnies, body builders and sleb wannabes in shiny jumpsuits. So do you believe it was genuine enthusiasm that motivated the kids in the audience to get out their felt pens and make those placards? Or was it more likely that they were told to do so by the same producers who kept yelling them throughout the show ‘OK, let’s try that applause again. But louder this time.’

Yes, I know, I know: all TV is lies and artifice. But with Gladiators it’s just so transparent. However much co-host Bradley Walsh is being paid to electroshock some semblance of life into this corpse, it’s not enough. Walsh is known for his cheeky chappiness and his gags, which serves him well on his daytime quiz-show The Chase, but here he comes across like a desperate ringmaster trying unsuccessfully to revive a sad provincial circus. Somehow, Gladiators just doesn’t lend itself to real humour, only the ersatz, frantic kind, such as when Walsh did his best to milk the fact that one contestant had held on to the lower limbs of a gladiator called Legend. ‘And he grabbed on to Legend’s leg-end,’ he chortled, mugging and gurning as if this were literally the world’s funniest ever joke.

Gladiators 2024

And however much co-host Barney Walsh is being paid, it’s regrettably too much. Though I’m personally all for nepotism, it just feels painful to watch a younger, better looking, but not nearly as poised or quick or funny version of Bradley watching his dad, adoring and puppy-eyed, as he waits for his next verbal cue. If he weren’t Bradley’s son, we’d surely give him more time to settle in. As it is, we’re made to feel uncomfortable and a bit embarrassed, in a way you shouldn’t when you’re watching what is supposed to be slick, professional entertainment.

The action itself is about as exciting as American football – which is to say, it’s a stop-start yawnarama. I’m sure that for the competitors standing atop a high pilar and being bashed by a 6ft 5in giant – called, imaginatively, Giant – with an oversized ear-wax removal stick is a nerve-wracking experience. But to watch it’s just messier – but less involving – than a playground scrap.

Nor can I summon up any more enthusiasm for the latest series of The Traitors, a format which is spreading across the TV world like a hideous virus that turns the victim’s brain to mush. There’s even a Finnish version: how does that work in a country with a population so small all the contestants must already know one another?

OK, so I got sucked in first time I saw it in the Australian version. But why would you ever get dragged into this time-sink again? What I resent about the British version, set in Scotland, with Claudia Winkleman hamming it up as a Brora goth, is – as with Gladiators – the shameless manipulation. In a recent episode, for example, a woman who we knew was a traitor was unmasked at the end as such. Instead of just letting her say: ‘Yes, I’m a traitor’ there was a long pause, during which some emotive music about the length of a Wagner opera was played, and then we cut to the credits, as if somehow the non-revelation were so thrilling and significant, it deserved to be turned into a cliff-hanger.

The Traitors