To say I was excited when I heard the news that the show Robot Wars is coming back for a new series in 2016 is an understatement!
The original series was one of my favourite shows on television at the time knowing that it's coming back fills me with lots of excitement.
At the time of writing this, no actual air date has been set, but it has been confirmed it will be a six part series, back in it's original home of BBC Two. The new run will be presented by Irish funnyman Dara Ó Briain & newcomer, Angela Scanlon, as pit reporter. The original commentator, Jonathan Pearce, has also been confirmed as reprising his role from the original series.
For anyone that's never seen or heard of Robot Wars, here's a bit of info about the show.....
The original series was originally presented by Jeremy Clarkson before Craig Charles took over the reigns from series 2. Philippa Forrester, Julia Reed and Jayne Middlemiss have all co-hosted the show, while Jonathan Pearce provided commentary during the show's entire run. The show originally aired on BBC Two between 1998 and 2003, before moving to Five between 2003 and 2004.
The format of the show follows teams of "roboteers" who build their own robots to fight
against one another in both friendly and tournament bouts in a series of knockout-style rounds.
The first round tended to have 4 robots competing in a last robot standing competition.
The competition would progress to a one on one fight in the semi-final, leading to a fight to the finish in the final round. The winner of each final would then progress to compete against one another in quarter-final and semi-finals before, hopefully, progressing to the Grand Final. While
competing against each other, they also had to avoid arena hazards and other
obstacles, as well as the more powerful House Robots, which were not
bound by the same weight or weapon restrictions as the contestants were.
Some of the "roboteers" had great success with their creations, whilst others not so much. The more notable robots featured were Killertron, Panic Attack, Razer (My favourite), Firestorm & Wheely Big Cheese.
No information has been released regarding house robots featured in the new series. However it is believed that original house robots Sir Killalot, Matilda and Dead Metal will make appearances in the new series, but nothing has been confirmed yet (See teaser trailer, below).
Shooting of the new series is set between the 4th-6th and the 11th-13th March 2016 in a new, purpose-built, bullet-proof arena in Glasgow.
Did you watch the original series? Do you have any memories from the original series? Are you going to watch the new series?
Please, share your views and comments below. I look forward to reading them :)
Written by TonyMayhew on Feb 14, 2016
wow! first they bring back BattleBots, now they are bringing back Robot Wars! can't wait!
This show was awesome,I really liked the no holds barred type of Robot battles,don't remember name of the one contestants robot,but it completely obliterated other competition to pieces & was my all time fave when ever it showed up.I hope this new season has a fight to the death type of format allowing competitors to rip each others creations to smithereens & that we get even a longer episodic season afterwards.I also watched series Robotica around the same time that had robot fights as well as a obstacle course that was really wicked too watch contestants work around.Hope this genre gets a reboot & comes back strong :) So can't wait & thanks for bringing this to our attention.