The reviews are in after the relaunch of Gladiators on BBC One over the weekend, and some viewers are not at all sure about new co-presenter Barney Walsh. Actually, some of them are very sure: they think he’s an over-promoted nepo baby who is taking the job of a better presenter.
Walsh co-presents the reboot with his dad, Bradley, an established star with a strong track record in light entertainment helmsmanship. Standing next to an old hand with a wealth of experience, someone who makes it look that easy, it was obvious to some that Walsh Jnr has yet to develop the presenting chops to carry his half of the format. He’s just not ready.
It probably didn’t help that, between the two of them, the Walshes were all over the schedules on Saturday night, from Casualty to an episode of their travelogue Breaking Dad on ITV. Audiences get chippy with this level of ubiquity.
Presenting duos are hard to nail. That unnameable chemistry between two on-screen talents is incredibly hard to find. And it is a talent. You only have to see it done badly to know that. I present Samantha Fox and Mick Fleetwood at the 1989 Brits as evidence. We remember the stinkers (for decades to come) and we often take the real pros for granted.
Every producer in the land starts by wishing they had Ant and Dec and works back from there. Or Claudia Winkleman, whose brain works so quickly she can effectively perform both sides of a double act without breaking a sweat. But those three are busy, busy people.
It’s no wonder the producers of Gladiators thought that a father and son team was the way to go. Years of shorthand developed over the breakfast table, a dynamic that can really play on the old/young relationship. The cross-demographic appeal of having two generations together. How could it miss?
As Walsh Snr himself said in a recent Virgin Radio interview: “They wanted a family slant on it. So, our show on ITV, Breaking Dad, that’s where that came from.” The series sees the travel-averse Bradley accompany his 26-year-old son on a series of road trips across the globe. It was effectively their audition for Gladiators.
There is nothing terribly wrong with Barney Walsh as a presenter. I can already hear some of you yelling at me for typing that. But he’s fine. He can read an autocue and hit his mark and seems comfortable in front of a camera. Given another few months in the job, he’ll only improve and grow in confidence. But is it likely any of these presenting gigs would have found their way onto his CV without Dad? Probably not. He’s an actor by trade and if he plans to segue into hosting, he’s going to need a lot more practice. Ideally, that’s something you’d do away from the glare of a Saturday night BBC One audience.
The TV schedules have been awash with unscripted “adult child and parent” formats for some time now. Jack and Michael Whitehall amiably falling out over something, every appearance by George Lamb since the mid-noughties standing sheepishly next his more famous father, Larry. I suspect they’re trying to mine the hidden seam of magic created by Adam Buxton when he introduced us to BaadDad decades ago.
But the unhappy evolution that has taken place since then means new presenting talent is losing out to the unreasonably elevated off-spring of the already famous.
I also think that 2024 demands presenting duos be more representative than two cis white men. We’re still on a course correct in terms of the faces we see on TV and even as some cry that it’s “wokeness gone mad” to keep gender representation at the top of the agenda, we don’t have it yet. So we need to.
Wither Ulrika Jonsson? Why not bring her back considering the nostalgia of audiences who remember the original show? I can give you one reason why not. She has had the temerity to age since the nineties and now doesn’t look exactly the same as she used to.
But if producers are unwilling to tread old ground again (so to speak), a primetime Saturday night show needs a female face on it who, in this case, isn’t in a leotard. Claudia Winkleman can’t be in eight places at once, so let’s find some new people who don’t also happen to have been born with the right surname. We could all list a dozen witty, confident, appealing non-male presenters off the top of our heads who could have aced the new show.
Plenty of names are being thrown around on social media as alternatives: Alex Scott and Nicola Adams for their ties to sport and physical fitness; comedians like Jess Fostekew who take an interest in physical fitness and training. We could list them all day.
Gladiators isn’t University Challenge. But never underestimate what sort of brain is needed to drive an entertainment juggernaut like that faultlessly through the Saturday night schedules.
The online snarking directed at Barney Walsh himself is completely uncalled for, but producers misjudged the room when they hired a greenhorn on the basis of his relationship with his dad.