In a giant TV studio somewhere in Japan, a retired baseball player and a former rugby star are 40 minutes into a competition to see who can do the most sit-ups. Lying with their feet hooked to the top of a steep, bright-pink slide that has long since become a river of sweat, they must respond to a buzzer every five seconds by hauling themselves up using just their abs and hitting a button with their foreheads. They\u2019ve both done that more than 500 times \u2013 when someone eventually misses a rep, their feet detach and down they go.<\/p>\n
If this were Squid Game, the slide would end with a lethal drop. But instead it\u2019s Final Draft, a wholesome and emotional Japanese reality contest for ex-sportspeople, so all that\u2019s at risk is the right to remain in the competition. As a long sequence of incredibly gruelling elimination showdowns whittles 25 contestants down to the one who will win 30m yen (about \u00a3150,000), Squid Game is an influence, but so are Gladiators and Ninja Warrior, as well as modern Netflix sports fests like Physical: 100 and Ultimate Beastmaster. Mature British viewers might think of 1970s BBC stalwart Superstars<\/a>, the multi-event contest between athletes from different disciplines that briefly threatened to turn parallel bar dips into the UK\u2019s national sport.<\/p>\n Watching from outside Japan, the barrier to entry is that, unless you\u2019re so keen on water polo, kabaddi, American football or ultimate Frisbee that you watch those sports\u2019 Japanese domestic leagues, you will have heard of very few of the contestants. Perhaps Japanese viewers won\u2019t be that familiar with them either, since the lineup mixes champions with those who never quite made it.<\/p>\n The sit-up slides of doom \u2026 Final Draft. Photograph: Netflix<\/p>\n So who cares which of these ripped strangers will be the best at running up a mountain or traversing a monkey bar course? The endeavours in Final Draft are long grinds but the contestants are a happy, humble bunch and, watching them in adversity, we get to know and like them. Emerging personalities include gentle-natured bodybuilder Kenta Tsukamoto<\/a>, and Hozumi Hasegawa<\/a>, a wise, wiry boxer with three world-title belts. Olympic wrestler Eri Tosaka<\/a>\u2019s determination and cunning makes her the most likely of the female contestants to defy the odds in a contest that has a few too many events based on pure physical strength.<\/p>\n