The challenges are gruelling, the contestants near-superhuman and it looks like a dystopian thriller. So why is Physical: 100 such a charming, lovely watch?
‘There’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product,” Apple founder Steve Jobs once said and, although he would have gone out in the first round of the Netflix endurance contest Physical: 100 – he gave up competitive swimming as a youth – he would have had to respect its artistry. The concept, a cross between Squid Game and Gladiators, is the sort of idea you would kick around before last orders, congratulating yourself on your brilliance then forgetting to text Netflix in the morning. But the execution – pulling together 100 of South Korea’s most aesthetically daunting humans, designing tests of athleticism that don’t favour any of them, and wrapping it all together with storytelling and production values straight out of a dystopian sci-fi thriller – is flawlessly Jobsian, even if there is not a turtleneck in sight.
In the show’s first proper challenge, the 100 face off in a series of one-on-one bouts, trying to grab a medicine ball in order to be the one holding on to it when a three-minute timer runs out. Contestants who did well during the brutal and gruelling qualifying round can pick their opponents, as well as choosing the arena – an obstacle-filled playground that favours more agile athletes, or a sandbag-lined paddling pool that rewards raw power. One of the show’s frontrunners, an Olympic gold medallist gymnast, doesn’t want to pick on anyone, so he asks the other 99 contestants who will step forward. Nobody wants to, so the gymnast chooses the weakest-looking contestant, only for it to emerge that the latter is a breakdancing contortionist who goes after the ball with a parkour-infused feline ferocity that is genuinely unsettling. No spoilers on who wins, but after the competition is over, they have a good-natured dance-off. The loser then has to smash a life-sized sculpture of their own torso with a hammer.
