Gladiators is back with us - and startlingly unchanged after its eight-year holiday. Gladiators? Ready! Referee John Anderson? Ready! Slightly annoying “ready” catchphrase? Ready!

However, the role of “chaotic presenter who was once a footballer” passes from John “Fash the Bash” Fashanu to Ian Wright, whose departure from the BBC's football coverage in search of greater levels of seriousness leads him to an arena in which people in swimsuits and cycle helmets are battering each other with giant cotton buds. People have different ideas about what's serious, of course, although, for my money, playing Eddie Large to Alan Shearer's Syd Little suddenly looks like something off the Open University schedule by comparison.

Fash, legendarily, brought new levels of untrained energy to Gladiators. Wrighty, too, brings an exciting lack of structure to the studio, but, in terms of sheer professionalism, he's Michael Aspel next to Fash, and it's up to us to work out whether the show gains or loses. Fash at least had his trademark battle-cry, “Awooga!” - a reliable crutch for the tongue-tied, even today. Wrighty, by contrast, only seems to have “Gladdy A-Ers!” which he tips his head back and shouts where the script permits, but which isn't, perhaps, finally, the same.

Anyway, it's a big hello to the new Gladiators themselves - Ice, Atlas, Enigma, Hooter, Brasso, Dipstick. (I may have made up some of those.) All of them have clearly spent a fortune on gym memberships and each strikes an impressive signature pose when their name is called - except Battleaxe, who, for some reason, appears to be pulling an invisible lavatory chain. If she pinched her nose with her left hand, the effect would be complete.

And it's an even bigger hello to the humble contenders - ordinary folk, such as you or I, yet fitter, perhaps, and, just possibly, more willing to wear Lycra on television. The revamp's one true innovation lies in positioning a pool under the events.

Thus, to the general indignity of being knocked off a perch by a resting stuntman with a pugil stick is added the further embarrassment of a dunking. But at least the contenders go down with a splash rather than a dull thud.

On the topic of dull thuds, the Gladiator shaping up to become the panto baddy (Wolf, last time) is Oblivion. “If you and I come face to face,” Oblivion told a perfectly nice contender called Tom, “I want to smash you right up.” Ali-like wit? Not exactly. But that's not to say it won't make a connection. It's the language of the playground, after all - without the swearing, obviously.

Blessedly unsmashed by Oblivion, Tom qualified for the quarter-finals via the Eliminator, which is billed as “the toughest assault course on the planet” and is certainly the toughest that takes place in what is essentially a children's soft-play zone.

After that, it was over to Wrighty for a sign-off. “He who dares doesn't always win,” the former Arsenal and England goalscorer announced, “but they do get the utmost respect.” Is that going to be a catchphrase? It's a little cumbersome, maybe. Or is Wrighty going to offer us a different philosophical nugget based on his reading each week? We'll just have to keep tuning in.

In the latest round of ITV's Beat the Star contest, Martin “Chariots” Offiah went down to a PE teacher from Bournemouth called Mr Russell. There were, of course, carnival scenes when the focused pedagogue came roaring out of the staff room and climbed all over the rugby league legend in a log-sawing competition. For us, though, the night's emblematic moment came during the old, fairground-style “Test Your Strength” challenge, in which ‘Chariots' brought down the mallet so hard that the Beat the Star sign fell off the summit of the machinery and almost decapitated Vernon Kaye. Ding!

Floppy sets? Heart-breakingly low production values? That's Beat the Star in a cost-cutting nutshell. In one round, the competitors took turns to see if they could drop a pebble into the neck of a bottle. In another, Chariots and Mr Russell sat at a card table and played a slightly sophisticated version of snap. Some will say this thriftiness, coated in glitter and served up in prime time, makes ITV look cheap. Certainly viewers taken to the cleaners in phone-in scams will reasonably be asking themselves, “Where, exactly, is my stolen money being spent?”

Yet Beat the Star flies the flag for recession-busting television and, by extension, the virtues of the Victorian parlour. Our children will be able to tell their offspring, “When we were young, we didn't need any fancy entertainment. We made do with Martin ‘Chariots' Offiah and a pack of playing cards - that was enough for us. We were poor, but we were happy.”