Fun for some (Robot Wars)

Member Name: polydeuces

Product:	Robot Wars
Date:	15/06/08 (8 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 8

Disadvantages: 8

Original presenter Jeremy Clarkson was quickly dropped and in Craig Charles hands the programme has a little more humour though some of his scripted introductions and poetic round-ups are a bit feeble. The commentator is Jonathan Pearce who is the easily excitable football commentator from Channel 5. Pearce obviously gets his name from what he does to your ear-drums. With some of the 'wars' though the lack of any discernable aggression from the robots means Pearce has to earn his crust to make it exciting.

Phillipa Forrester has now left to be replaced by another navel showing young lady. The task of this lady is to interview the contestants to see what tactics they have, how they feel after losing or interviewing a 9-year-old relative of the robot maker. To these questions the answers always are 'Just go in and see what happens', 'Gutted' and 'I don't know really'
The stars usually are the robots themselves. These fall into two categories - those that are trying to win and these all look like manic video recorders and those that look like the products of an overactive imagination. What usually happens is that those in the first category push those in the second category into a pit or into the clutches of the house robots. The house robots have been built with large budgets and usually crush, mangle, set fire to the odd robots and then throw them into the pits. More usually what happens is one of the competitors robots becomes immobilised (i.e. it just stops). Sometimes there is controversy when two robots go into the pit at almost the same time. You can be sure if these incidents go to the judges the seeded robot always gets the verdict courtesy of a rule you've never heard of before.

Robot Wars is good harmless fun. The robots are the stars, their makers usually boring geeks who haven't seen the sun since last February. The presenters have the right balance of fun and seriousness.

Summary: 8