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The original (Australian) Gladiators was one of my favourite game shows of all time - it was always much more interesting watching grown men and women beat each other with giant pompoms than sit in a chair and answer questions.

This new version is practically a carbon copy of the older one. If you were looking for something new, exciting and different, you won't find it here. If you were looking for good quality, cheesy entertainment you'll find it by the bucket load.

'Amazon' and 'Thunder' are rapidly shaping up to be the Gladiators to watch in terms of pure showmanship, but I have a feeling they'll all give a good chuckle and a great show.

Clinton Spice is your average smug, self-satisfied jerk who honestly believes any woman would be lucky to have him. On a business trip, he meets an attractive woman who wants nothing to do with him. A few miss chosen words leads to a spot of theft, a job in danger, a bit of kidnapping, a near death experience and a run in with the girl's cousins - who just happen to be bouncers at the local dance club. However, the attractive leads do eventually find each other attractive, and it more or less all works out in the end. Michael Tuahine, who plays Spice, is extremely attractive and, at some points in the short film, looks an awful lot like a young Sean Connery. If you could convince the Bond franchise to cast an Islander as Bond, he would make an excellent choice indeed. Keep watching through the credits for some fun on the dance floor (a feature that has been turning up in the credits of a few Australian movies these past few years).

This 'pilot' for a series that never eventuated is only four minutes long, but every minute of it is a blast... as long as you're already a Wonder Woman fan. The series would never had survived simply because the idea works best as a spoof, and most people at the time wouldn't have had much to do with Wonder Woman. Now that there has been at least one 'straight' television series about her, the spoof works a lot better. It's also a lot of fun for those of us know WW from the comics, but the less you know about the character the less it is likely to tickle your funny bone.

There are American cartoons, there are Japanese cartoons, and then there are American (dubbed) versions of Japanese cartoons. Anyone who has ever watched the original Japanese versions of cartoons will spend a very long time telling you how the Amercians have senselessly butchered them when they dubbed them for Western audiences, but the fact of the matter is, what you don't know won't hurt you. If you are seeing this cartoon for the first time in it's American version, it's fun. Rediculous, and at times extremely odd, but fun. You can tell bits are missing, and in some parts the language and tone of voice don't match what seems to be happening on screen, but you get used to that. Take it with a grain of salt and you'll enjoy it. On the otherhand, if you've already seen the original Japanese version, don't touch the dubbed version with a ten foot pole - it will just make you angry. Remember, Japanese cartoons operate on a higher, more sophisticated level than American cartoons, and the yanks usually doctor them to suit their sheltered audience. It works out fine as long as you haven't seen the original (although you do occasionally get the feeling you're missing things).

This was a very pleasant show set in a time that was doomed to be shortlived. The telephone exchange workers of "Bloody Darby" (as Sylvia once put it) live under the threat of automation - a poignant fate we know is not far from them, while going through their lives and loves in a small community where everyone knows and loves the "hello girls".

It is not a grand series, but it's nice. The music is great (I'd love to own the sound track), the characters are easily identified and, while never really making your heart race, they draw you in and make you care about what happens to them.

As with most short lived series, though, we never find out everything we want to know, which is a shame because these girls are worth knowing.

It's a shame this show only lasted for two seasons. It wasn't brilliant by any means, but it was surprisingly easy to get into, and after watching a number of episodes I became quite hooked on it. In Australia it was shown at two o'clock on Wednesday mornings, but I found it was the perfect show to have with breakfast on a Saturday and taped it regularly. Unfortunately, I discovered too late that there were only a limited number of episodes, and the show could not be found on video, so I didn't manage to keep any of them.

The show itself is quite remarkable. Unlike most science fiction programmes, it is set in the near future and almost everything used in the series is something that could conceivably be created today. The story lines and acting are a little too cartoonish for the show to be overly believable, but there is a stronger element of believability to this programme than many other science fiction offerings. Produced as a co-operative exercise between England and Germany, with German, British and American actors and characters from Germany, GB, the US and Russia, there is more than one 'double meaning' behind the Space Station's name: Unity (incidentally, the name of one of the modules of the International Space Station). The possible issues of corporate ownership is explored in detail in this series, as are the tensions that arise from isolating a small group of people in a confined space. I wouldn't call the series ground-breaking, but it has it's high points and is worth more attention that it received.

While the first six years of this show are arguably the best, any chance to see any of the reruns is to be seized with both hands. The comedy goes from the brilliant to the bizarre, the feel is fun, and the layout is something worth stealing. There's a whole generation out there who still fight the urge to duck whenever they say the words "I don't know" for fear of green slime falling from above, and many a fond smile can be found when the phrase "Lisa, don't encourage your father" is repeated in a certain tone of voice. When this show was good, it was very, very good.