After six weeks of dreading the reaction to their flagship Sunday evening programme Top Gear, BBC bosses must have been fearing the worst when the first episode of the rebooted Robot Wars hit the airwaves last night. What inventive ways would the critics find to slate it? How many cutting, vicious comments would they have to trawl through on Twitter complaining that it had desecrated the memory of the original, ruined their childhoods and that the show's producers were worse than Hitler?
Well, as it turned out, hardly any. It seems that - gasp - people actually loved it.
Sure, the cheeky chappy persona and enthusiasm of original presenter Craig Charles was missed, while - for everyone who remembered the original - no one could ever truly replace Philippa Forrester in our hearts, but their replacements - Dara O'Briain and Angela Scanlon were equally good, with their own styles.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Pearce returned to get massively overexcited about the actual robot action - of which there was plenty, with old house robots like Matilda and Sir Killalot reappearing to cause havoc alongside the new competing robots.
Here's what Twitter thought of the show: it's OK BBC guys, you can stop looking through your fingers now...
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New robot wars was epic! pic.twitter.com/d6cXzEW66y
— Ben Milnes (@ASwift_Benjie) July 25, 2016