In a series of physical games and contests, two teams of celebrities are honed and trained by two former American wrestlers to produce two teams who will compete for the grand title at the end of the series. With an overexcited host announcing each event and each celebrity (by their new "wrestling" names) the celebrities go head to head with their opposite number from the other team in front of an arena of baying fans to win. STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs <br/><br/>Two teams of six 'celebrities', The Warriors and The Crusaders, basically battle it out for, er, ultimate supremacy in this latest attempt to draw in Saturday night viewing figures.<br/><br/>I was just about to write for my one-line-summary 'so it's going to be axed then', but then I couldn't help thinking about another review I wrote involving Kate Lawler for RI:SE and realized that would have been exactly the same summary I wrote for that…Coincidence,or what?!? What was it she did again…was she the first woman who walked on the moon or something?!?…oh no, wait, she was the first woman who won Big Brother, ah, yes…..Anyway, she's just one of a number of 'celebrity' nobodies (the most notable of which is probably James Hewitt. This show is a complete breach of the Trade Descriptions Act!) battling it out in this pretty flat and unexciting attempt to liven up the dire state of Saturday night TV (although TV's in a pretty poor state in general.) <br/><br/>The main problem (although you wouldn't know it to look at them) is that they are celebrities (though even Avid Merrion wouldn't 'love' them!) and they wouldn't know real wrestling if it hit them in the face. The duels they are set look really tepid and fail to generate much in the way of genuine excitement at all, meaning you don't care who wins or loses and that the show just becomes a tedious slog to the end.<br/><br/>On the presenting front, the heart and soul of the show I would actually consider to be Rowdy Roddy Piper. bob the moo obviously found him a bit irritating, but he's a proper professional wrestler and he's spent his whole life whooping up the excitement and atmosphere of the wrestling arena over in America where it's done for real with real professionals unlike this pampered lot and he's just trying (in vein, it would seem) to transfer some of that over here. I actually think he's the one bright spark in this whole sorry mess,to be honest. Better than boring old, rent-a-presenter Kate Thornton anyway.And, if she weren't bad enough, we have Jack 'I'm clinging on to my celebrity by the skin of my teeth' Osbourne presenting some kind of spin-off show on ITV2, hamming it up and really succeeding in getting on everyone's nerves.<br/><br/>American WWE wrestling still enjoys quite a big fan-base over here, so it's kind of understandable that someone would want to make a British spin-off of sorts.Unfortunately, this hasn't been very successful, either critically or commercially, meaning we won't be seeing much more of it now. Note to telly producers: work harder. And, unless you want your show to be cancelled not even half-way through mid-season, please, if you see Kate Lawler, in the words of Iron Maiden: Run to the hills, run for your life.**<br/><br/>AUTHOR'S NOTE: Since this review was written, due to plummeting ratings and the cancellation of the show, ITV1 have obviously used the craze whipped up by the release of the new, final Star Wars movie to use one Saturday evening for a showing of The Phantom Menace, so they can quietly usher Celebrity Wrestling away from it's prime-time Saturday slot so it can live out the remainder of it's final, humiliating, pitiful days in a morning children's TV slot. For kids who only have access to terrestrial TV, it might have worked in keeping a few of it's viewers but those with Sky Digital have a clear choice: watching these amateurish, pampered lot do their tepid little thing or tuning in to Sky One and watching the staged but genuine, truly hard-hitting antics of the real-life professional wrestlers on The WWE Experience…tough choice, huh?!?!??? ITV must have been really pulling out the stops in finding Saturday night opposition for the BBC and Doctor Who. Unfortunately, what ever they came up with was ditched and they went for "Celebrity Wrestling" instead.<br/><br/>Words cannot describe the sheer badness of this; I'll just say I'd take Family Affairs, Big Brother, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! or one of those written-on-the-back of-the-bus "sitcoms" the BBC always seem to churn out to fill in the Friday night gap between Eastenders and Have I Got News For You.<br/><br/>Everything about this "show" is just wrong and excruciatingly lame; it can't go five minutes without one of the obnoxious presenters turning to the crowd and yelling "ARE YOU READY!!!!" or a big screen flashing highly imaginative slogans such as "Bring it on" as two ex-reality TV show contestants (The highest form of 'celebrity' on display here) try to knock each other of a spinning platform with a stick. Given, one of the presenters is Roddy Piper, although he can't save this trainwreck.<br/><br/>Can ITV do any worse? Yes it can, next we've got "Celebrity Love Island" on every night for the next three years.<br/><br/>TV is just dead. Trash like this gets the primetime slots on ITV, and Channel 4 is allowed to shunt inventive works of genius like "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace" into midnight viewing slots and then axe them. Heck ITV has Harry Hill at their beck and call, and even he is on either at 11 PM or in the middle of the afternoon with no audience.<br/><br/>Avoid this dreck at all costs. It is an insult to your intelligence and humanity. Hopefully, 'celebrity' orientated game shows like this and reality TV will one day take their rightful place alongside the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Shanysy replied
351 weeks ago