A few thoughts on Physical 100

Physical 100 is a current Korean reality show in which 100 elite athletes compete against each other in various physical games for a 300M Won prize, which is around $240K.

The show starts with each contestant having to find a plaster cast bust of their torso in the foyer type entrance arena.

The busts, and the contestant's bodies are a real theme in the show, there is constant mention of who has the ultimate body and many of the competitors are super ripped and gorgeous, both men and women but there's only about a dozen women in total in the show, it's mostly men.

When a competitor loses a match they have to smash their bust which is basically their exit ritual.

Reality meets Squid Games (without the death!)

It actually took me about 20 minutes to realise this wasn't a fictional show but that the contestants are actually real like athletes and fitness fanatics.

There's mainly a mix of strong men (including Korea's strongest man), MMA fighters, cross fit champions, lots of professional wrestlers, some ex olympic athletes and social media fitness enthusiasts.

Oh and quite a few special forces people too, who seem to be personalties in South Korea, well I guess there's history of the military being important!

So far we're only into the third round of games... the first being simply a contest where they had to hang off a bar by their arms for as long as possible - the top 50 got to then choose their opponent and game for the second round...

The second round consisted of competing for a ball - either in a wrestling arena or on an assault course, so strength versus dodging.

That narrowed the field down to 50 for round 3 which is the latest episode not yet resolved which involves teams of five carrying bags of sand across a wobbly bridge - most sand wins!

The contestants all seem nice enough and respectful of each other and the games are refereed fairly enough and there's a medic, so it's not actually Squid Games but there is a certain feel of that!

There's lots of footage of them being interviewed as well as the actual battles which is OK - you get to know the characters.

An interesting mix of physicalities

The show pits brute strength agains agility and the contestants don't know what game they will be playing before they pick their opponents or teams which makes it a bit ridiculous - nine times out of ten if the Strongest man in Korea picks a gymnast as his opponent and then there's an agility style game the strong man will lose, and vice versa if it's wrestling, in which case the strong man literally just has to sit on the smaller guy.

So the premise of the show, to find the best physicality is fundamentally flawed.

Glorifying beauty...?

Yeah the show does do this - it's crude - it's a real celebration of the ultimate body, shamelessly so, but at least a lot of the bodies aren't doing it for the sake of having a nice body - they're built because of functionality.

They have muscles, most of them, because they want to be able to do handstands or climb mountains or compete in the olympics!

But it's respectful and just a bit of fun at the end of the day

What I actually like about the show is that it's clear that the contestants aren't taking it too seriously, I mean they want to win and are annoyed with themselves when they lose but they clearly all know that it's the game that determines who is most likely to win if there's a physicality mix match and they are all very respectful of each other.

So I think I can put my cynicism aside and just call this pure entertainment.

NB if you watch it you'll need the FF button as the show has this annoying habit of replaying three times over certain key moments - like when someone drops off the hanging bar they'll replay that 3 second clip three times over from different angles, it's annoying.

And it's a bit slow - this could easily be 6 episodes rather than the scheduled 8 and it would be better.