Robot Wars is BACK !

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the first new episode. The format has barely changed, and a good thing too. The format worked extremely well, it was sheer saturation that got boring by the end. Only six episodes per season should take care of that. A pretty good balance between interviewing the teams and robots beating the crap out of each other. And the old spirit of teams helping each other in the workshop but being utterly merciless in the arena is still going strong. It's very much good clean fun and very, very silly. It's not my favourite TV show by any stretch, but I love it anyway. Like a reverse Hillary Clinton, it's very hard to dislike Robot Wars.

That said, much as Dara O Briain has grown on me, I did prefer the more melodramatic enthusiasm of Craig Charles. I wouldn't say he lent the show gravitas, but he did give it character. And the arena has been rebuilt and no doubt improved to deal with the heavier, much more powerful - like, really quite a lot more powerful - robots, but there's nothing fundamentally new about it. It might have been nice to try and add a few new touches. In the end though, it's the robots and their designers that make the show. And so far they're on fine form. I predict a bright future, so long as the producers don't go overboard with getting Robot Wars on a year-round weekly schedule.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36866552