Tag Archives: Competition

The Bridge Australia: Season One – TV Review

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TL;DR – This has an intriguing premise and a clear visual style but struggles in areas like how it represents some of the conflicts.  

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ service that viewed this series.

Day 3 - 306 metres to go

The Bridge Australia Review –

Regarding competition television shows, they can capture my heart like Survivor and make me watch season after season. Or I bounce off quicker than that time they tried to do Survivor but on a pirate ship. However, I am always looking for something new in this area which is where I found gems like Lego Masters. Today, I am looking at the first three episodes of The Bridge Australia to see which side of the coin it will land. Will it suck me in, or will it end up on the bottom of a Tasmanian river?   

So to set the scene, there is a river deep in the wilderness of Tasmania, and in that river is a $250,000 prize sitting on an island beckoning them to claim it. All the twelve participants must do is work together and build the titular 330-meter bridge from the materials around them. They have 17 days to work together to get across the island while a guardian blinks with its red light and tempts those making the trip.

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Movie Review – The Speed Cubers

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TL;DR – A look into the world of Rubik’s Cubes and those who can solve them in under 7 seconds.    

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

The Speed Cubers. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

One of the great things about documentaries is when they take you into a world that you have no idea about. Today we get a film that does just that, with the world of Rubik’s Cubes. I don’t get Rubik’s Cubes. My brain cannot compute them. The skill involved boggles my mind, so watching it all unfold is a real joy.

Where this documentary works is by offering us an insight into a world that everyone has a handle on but then also something you can’t quite comprehend. I think everyone has played with a Rubik’s Cube at some point in their lives. It is a novelty thing, that let’s be honestly more than a few of us have only finished one because we pealed the colour panels off and switched them around. It is a tactile situation that we can all relate to, so when you see people move their fingers in a blur and shift chaos into order in mere seconds.

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TV Review – The Floor is Lava Season 1

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TL;DR – While not as binge-able as some of its competitors, it is still a bunch of fun with a ridiculous premise.  

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Floor is Lava. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

As a young person, I think everyone has played ‘The Floor is Lava‘ much to the castigation of our parents as that one fragile item becomes a casualty of the chaos. So it is almost surprising that someone has not tried to turn it into a competition show before, well now we get to see if it can work or if it is something best left to the imagination.

So to set the scene, three teams enter into a room full of lava (red coloured water) with a set of themed obstacles between the entrance and exit. We have a basement (museum), a bedroom, a planetarium, a study and a kitchen. There are multiple routes through the room, some harder than others with objects throughout that can make things easier. But it would be best if you were careful because one slip and you’re in the water, I mean lava, and the longer you take, the more the steps slip into the red making everything harder.

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TV Review – Win the Wilderness

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TL;DR – This is a fascinating twist on the competition show format because it has real stakes that ground everything.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Win the Wilderness. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

I’ve watched a lot of competition shows in my time, everything from trapping people on an island and watching them pick each other off, to sitting and loving people building Lego constructions. However, it has been a long time since I have watched something new, well today we have just that with the joint Netflix/BBC show Win the Wilderness.  

So to set the scene, in the deep in the Alaskan wilderness is a house on Ose Mountain, it is far from the nearest town and can only be accessed by plane. Living on Ose Mountain are Duane and Rena who built the house with their bare hands. However, Duane and Rena are getting too old to be able to have the energy to maintain the property and it is time to give their legacy to someone else. So, six couples from the United Kingdom Matt and Rachel, Mark and Emily, Chris and Tina, Theo and Bee, Laura and Jerome, and Pete and Jane have flown into central Alaska with one thing on their minds, to prove that they can continue that legacy.

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TV Review – Ultimate Beastmaster: Season 2 (No Surrender)

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TL;DR – The second outing is a much more streamlined production, learning from the mistakes from the first season, but falls a bit in its casting.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Ultimate Beastmaster Season 2

Review –

So at the start of the year a small little gem dropped on Netflix called Ultimate Beastmaster, a show clearly inspired by Ninja Warrior but with a big twist. This time around it was a multi-national competition with competitors and hosts from six different countries, with each country getting a different final cut. Some hailed it as the beginning for a new age of global television, I wouldn’t go that far, but it was a nifty concept. Well, it is the end of the year and Netflix has given us a little end of year surprise with Season 2 dropping much earlier than I expected it to. So today we are going to take a look at the highs and lows of Season 2 of Ultimate Beastmaster.

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