Gladiators ratings revealed as reboot trounces The Masked Singer

The first episode of the Gladiators reboot was watched by over 6 million viewers.

By James Hibbs

Published: Monday, 15 January 2024 at 11:27 AM

The BBC’s Gladiators reboot, which started airing for the first time on Saturday (13th January), has proven to so far be a ratings hit, becoming the broadcaster’s most-watched new show of the year.

The first episode, which aired from 5:50pm on BBC One, was watched by an average audience of 6 million, with a peak of 6.3 million. Meanwhile, ITV’s The Masked Singer, which aired the third episode of its fifth season from 7pm on ITV1, received an average audience of 3.7 million.

The ratings for Gladiators mean it is the most successful in a line of recent TV reboots, besting the viewing figures for other returning entertainment formats including Survivor and Big Brother.

The new version of Gladiators is hosted by Bradley Walsh and his son Barney, and sees a whole new line-up of gladiators facing off against contestants in a mixture of new challenges and returning favourites.

Mo Gilligan, Davina McCall, Joel Dommett, Rita Ora and Jonathan Ross all posing next to one another for The Masked Singer
Mo Gilligan, Davina McCall, Joel Dommett, Rita Ora and Jonathan Ross.
Bandicoot TV/ITV

Bradley Walsh previously said of hosting alongside Barney: “It was an amazing feat for us to be able to do – for us especially, having been involved in the original Gladiators.”

He continued: “How the show came about was Dan Baldwin rang us after we did Breaking Dad and said, ‘Look we’ve got this one-off. We’d like to be able to do a show of Gladiators – a nostalgic show, a one-off’, and we said, ‘Yeah, OK’, and Dan said, ‘Because of the family background’.”

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“And the family background is that back in the day, Barney’s mum, my wife, [was] sitting there. Don [Donna Derby] used to run and choreograph all the cheerleaders and then subsequently became the social producer on the show. And I used to go down and watch five weeks of filming.

“It was great and Barney came along and I used to walk Barney in the pram or the pushchair around the arena floor to meet all the Gladiators. He was only one or two or whatever it was, so it’s a whole family affair.”

This ratings win for the BBC comes after a strong start to the year for ITV, with Mr Bates vs the Post Office becoming the broadcaster’s biggest new drama in over a decade.

In light of this, a repeat of the drama has been added into ITV1’s schedules, with the four episodes set to air nightly from Monday 15th to Thursday 18th January.