The new series, being aired on BBC2 after The Simpsons on Friday and repeated at 12:30 on Sundays.

The TV programme was a joint effort from Mentorn and the BBC, presented by Craig Charles of Red Dwarf fame out on stage, replacing Jeremy Clarkson,  and the delectable Philippa Forrester from Tomorrow's World remains, commentating from the pits, i.e. where the robots are "repaired" using large hammers - which we all know is not staged at all.  No.  Ahem.

The previous series' shows comprised of several rounds in which "test the robots to their edge of their abilities".  The show kicked off with the Gauntlet which, basically is an assault course where the robot which finishes in the longest amount of time or travels the shortest distance is eliminated from the competition.  The roboteers have a choice of three routes - a maze, where good manoeuvrability is necessary; two ramps, where a good maximum climb angle is required or the robots get stuck as their drive wheels leave the ground (as demonstrated many times); or take on the clear path straight to the finish with only the house robots in the way.

The next challenge in TV show order was the Trial which is basically a mixture of different games to give the show variety.   Mentorn claim to have spent two years working out a suitable layout for a TV programme and this is where they fail miserably.  The games, snooker, labyrinth, football, sumo, a demolition derby type race that I can't quite remember the name of and a variation of the old playground game British bulldog.  You can probably work out what they all entail...

Then comes the interesting bits.  The surviving robots then begin the Face-off events.  One on one action, but with the house robots intervening, which kind of takes the point away slightly...

Each of the winners then go through into what Mentorn built up all the way through the series as the "grand final", but in fact was just a melee (prounounced mel-ay) event where all six robots were put in a ring and the last one standing was the winner.

Basically the whole show was biased toward a TV audience, but I believe that another competition is being set up called BotZ where there are far less restrictions and it is primarily run as a competition.

The new series boasts a very nasty looking new House Robot going by the name of Sir Kill-a-Lot.  Crappy name - good robot.   And the arena has now been equiped with rather large flaming grilles.  Nasty.*

* The above statement was written before the actual edited show was aired on TV.  From this I can now renouce this statement completely for the following reasons:

• Sir Killalot has lots of weaknesses.  It is only good with loads of other house robots with it. 
• Somebody took it out really easily...
• ... because it has a wire mesh back because the damn thing kept overheating.
• It's too big and slow
• It's only weapon is the hydro. lift and cut thing - pretty pointless with 1-1, although as mentioned in point 1, it's good when there are other robots around to protect it.
  
• Flaming grilles are crap.  So is that thing on Sgt. Bash.  They only do damage to things where the people were stupid enough to use crappy tires or cover their robot in fur.  (D'oh!)