5 hours ago
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If there was one problem with Physical 100, the Korean gameshow featuring top-flight athletes rolling boulders, hauling mine carts and unspooling giant ropes in a bid to find the ultimate physique, it might have been a lack of swagger.
For some people, the starstruck, aw-shucks bonhomie between the contestants was part of the show’s appeal: a breath of sweat-tinged fresh air amid the faux sincerity and psychic barbs of other reality shows. For others, raised on The Real Housewives and boxing weigh-ins, it just wasn’t dramatic enough.
This, you’d have to say, is not an issue with Physical: Asia. This time, it’s a team competition featuring competitors from eight countries (including, for some reason, Australia) and right from the off, things feel a lot more dramatic.
In previous seasons, the stars of the show were the likes of UFC fighter Dong Hyun Kim and judo champ Yoshihiro “Sexyama” Akiyama. This time, eight-weight boxing great Manny Pacquiao is undoubtedly the marquee name – half of the athletes look genuinely awed to be in his presence – but it’s Team Oz who make the biggest impact. “We’re leaving number one, that’s the only way this ends,” announces team captain Robert “the Reaper” Whittaker via voiceover, as his team scream, snarl and whoop their way into the arena, sprinting around to high-five all the other competitors. Moments later a handstand competition kicks off, with all the CrossFitters and Parkour traceurs effortlessly outclassed by a rake-thin Cirque du Soleil performer who, you fear, might be having his best moment of the competition.
The team captains are prompted to make a speech: Japan and Korea talk about the inspiration they take from their country’s people and spirit, Mongolia (who get the occasional hawk-squeal SFX when they appear on-screen) note that they’re descendants of Genghis Khan, and the Aussies simply promise to run through anyone who gets in their way.
About 10 minutes later, things are going much worse for the acrobats. The first round is a battle to keep the most team members on one of several sumo-ring-sized podiums and things very quickly seem wildly unfair. The heaviest man in the contest, 175kg strongman competitor Eddie Williams, is literally three times the weight of some of the female competitors, and anyone who’s never grappled with another person seems at a distinct disadvantage. “I hate contact sports,” murmurs a retired rower, eyeing up the assorted judo champions and combat sambo athletes strategising about how to best hurl him off a raised platform. Probably should have watched the first two seasons before you signed the contract, buddy.
This sort of cross-cultural sporting exchange, though, is a big part of the fun. “Australian jumping boy, the restless one, what’s his deal?” asks a Turkish oil wrestler who – and I’m hoping he’d take this as a compliment – looks like a barrel wrapped in muscle and hair. “Oh, he’s a Parkour guy,” says female freestyle grappler Yasemin Adar Yiğit, shortly before having a good go at fighting three large men at once. A tiny judo champ grabs an outsized ssireum wrestler and declares his technique a bit amateurish, a baseball player puts up a surprising amount of resistance against an Australian rugby prop, and an Olympic gold-winning bobsleigh racer tries to throw a swimmer down a hill.
The team element works incredibly well and there are moments of strategic deviousness that fit the reality TV format perfectly – it’s all a good, clean, everyone-signed-the-waiver-right? lark and, miraculously, everyone makes it out of the first challenge without getting injured. Next up: hauling sandbags through an enormous shipwreck.
This sort of mildly-repetitive fitness fodder is perfect for Netflix: the ideal thing to help you power through some treadmill sprints first thing in the morning (parts of this review were written etc, etc), but also great brainless only-half-watching-it nonsense for the end of a long day. Weirdly, the challenges are much more relatable when they’re simpler: when everyone’s ziplining around with 50-kilo crates it almost looks manageable, but when you’re watching chiselled physical specimens sprint between cones for half an hour (a classic from season one), you get a great sense of how outclassed you’d be.
There are already American and Italian versions of the Physical franchise in the works: hopefully a UK version featuring Tom Daley and Luke Littler isn’t far away. If you’re having trouble making up the numbers, Netflix, give me a call: I can’t do a backflip or out-sprint Jessica Ennis-Hill, but I’ll smack-talk Eddie Hall until he throws me down a hill.
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Physical: Asia is on Netflix.
