Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators

5 episodes, 30-45 minutes each with interviews of most of the actual Gladiators, producers, show runners, etc with zero filler. Each episode had a good theme to it and they flew by fast. I never lost interest.

Unlike the other Netflix doc, "Pepsi, Where's my Jet?" which is the WRONG method to do a documentary, the American Gladiators documentary is by far something worthwhile to watch.

Even if you've only watched a single episode of the show when it was on TV, give this little mini series a shot. It's informative and interesting but most importantly - it's entertaining to watch, just like the TV show.

Amazing flow and depiction of what really went on behind the scenes of one of my favorite shows growing up. Powerful, honest and authentic. Really connects toll you to the real people who played the larger than life characters that played your favorite gladiators. Netflix really hir it out of the park with this one for sure. I highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for a good documentary to watch on Netflix. I can't say enough good things about it. I binge watched the entire series in one day. Very easy to get deeply involved with the content. I'm going to watch the whole thing again at some point because it was so good.

Watching this documentary reminds me of the time when I showed my kids an episode of He-Man. And the cartoon looked so old. I was never very into the American Gladiators program, but I remember watching it from time to time and thinking that it looked very good. I mean aesthetically it looked very good. But clearly I was mistaken. It does not look good at all. About the actual events of the story, I'm struck by a few different thoughts. The first is that it was really strange how concerned the production was that their athletes might have been using steroids, when they did not care at all about basic safety procedures to protect their athletes. And the other thing is that the show was only on for seven seasons, but it could have kept going if the company had wanted to keep investing in its development. They had a chance to create a new sport entirely. It seems like they were only interested in squeezing out as much money out of the idea as possible in the quickest amount of time. So it's kind of strange how they sacrificed a lot of potential money for a little bit of real money. As for the athletes themselves, only a few seem to be sympathetic characters, but that doesn't mean that they deserved to be exploited and after watching this series that's exactly what seems to have happened. So if you watched the show when you were younger, or you want to have free good explanation of a pop culture phenomenon from 30 years ago, it's a good watch.

This is worth watching just from the 90's nostalgia as theres lots of clips of commercials back then and it really brings you back into that time. As a kid who watched this show I think on re-runs in the mid to late 90's on saturday mornings...I loved the nostalgia. But even better is getting to know who the characters were behind the camera which was probably the most interesting thing about it. It also shows you how the show was made and all the funny stories that go into that, as well as the drama that happened as well. Excellent doc, and the pacing is extremely good and keeps you watching.

For those of us who grew up during the era in which this show aired, the nostalgia comes rushing in whilst watching this new series documenting American Gladiators.

I'll admit I was smiling through and through whilst watching this series. Initially, I hadn't even noticed my facial expression till the moment I happened to glance over at the mirror near the television and that's when I had decided I should actually write a review.

This is only my 2nd review ever -despite being on IMDb for 10+ years. Now was the original American Gladiator my favorite show? Not even close. Is this series my new favorite? Nope. But all-in-all, the telltale sign was that I enjoyed it so much that I was actually smiling and wasn't dreadfully checking to see how much longer till it's over (we all know how disappointing that feeling is when you realize something you're watching has let you down).

This series was made with the viewer in mind, which isn't so common nowadays. It's fun and exciting. What you'll really enjoy is that the episodes are short and sweet.

Too many productions have been packing shows and documentaries with fillers and B-roll just to extend them which leaves the viewer annoyed. This series, however, did the right thing, which was to get to the point but to tell the story in a fun way.

Give it a go!