David against Goliath, in a TV game version: TF1 will broadcast its new entertainment, “Gladiators”, from December 27 for several weeks, in which ordinary French people face mountains of muscles during sporting events, the channel announced on Tuesday.
This new Friday evening program has been entrusted to a presenting trio: Hélène Mannarino, Denis Brogniart (who will comment more particularly on the sporting events) and the veteran Jean-Pierre Foucault.
“You'll say to yourself: 'What is he still doing there, he's already clinging to Miss France'”, the latter joked at the end of November during the presentation of the show to the press.
“Gladiators” is the French adaptation of a format born in 1989 in the United States and which has spread throughout the world. A new version was relaunched in the United Kingdom last year by the BBC, to audience success.
This program, which “revisits the myth of David and Goliath”, is part of TF1's “family entertainment policy”, explained Julien Degroote, director of development and creation of the group.
The principle is simple: in each episode, eight candidates (four men, four women) challenge formidable “Gladiators” in a series of physical tests, in the middle of a giant arena. The winning duo will share 50,000 euros.
The “Gladiators” and “Gladiatrices” (sixteen in total, again with gender parity) all have extraordinary physiques and are nicknamed Tank, Viking, Fierce or Titanium.
The most impressive, Goliath, measures 1.97 m and 130 kilos, and served as a lining for the casting of the body of the wax statue of the American actor The Rock at the Grévin museum, according to TF1.
The tests are halfway between the cult show “Intervilles” and “Ninja Warrior”, another TF1 game: the candidates must, for example, cross a path of suspended beams or climb a climbing wall while trying to escape the charges of “Gladiators”, sometimes armed with shields or large foam clubs.
These athletes dressed like superheroes are presented as “superhuman demigods”, invincible and arrogant, “but with self-deprecation”, underlined Julien Degroote. A spirit reminiscent of wrestling matches, another great American entertainment.
Scheduled a few months after the Olympic Games, “Gladiators” is a format “in tune with the times”, based on the idea “of overcoming the insurmountable”, judged the manager.
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