
Thank goodness television is an audio-visual medium, because if it could transmit odours, the new season of SAS: Who Dares Wins would stink up the entire house. Slow-motion globules of saliva catch the light ingeniously, litres of vomit erupt out of nowhere, and candidates are casually shown experiencing diarrhoea, complete with soundtrack.
The show has relocated to the Vietnamese jungles for this series. It’s breathtakingly gorgeous, but the twenty candidates competing to see if they have what it takes to be a Special Forces warrior don’t have time to admire it. After all, it’s difficult to enjoy a beautiful vista while a man with phone box arms splashes you in the face with a hose and shouts you derogatory slurs.
‘The jungle is a harsh place to work in,’ says Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox of the directing staff cheerfully to the recruits. Everything desires a pop. Whether it’s a plant, an animal, or an insect, it’s all out to ruin your life.’
Aside from the change of locale, it’s more of the same formula that has worked for five regular series and three celebrity ones – breathy narration, gym-fit go-getters driven to tears by massive males calling them maggots, and plenty of mud, blood, and weariness. If something isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
It’s difficult not to sympathise with the recruits, who are being yelled at from fifty feet in the air or abseiling down a perilous waterfall only to be humiliated at the bottom. It must be difficult to accomplish the most badass thing you’ve ever done and then be told, ‘You made that look like a sack of s***. ‘Go over there and think about not being a jerk.’ Genuine quotation.
While the DS team (Foxy, jungle veteran Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham, Rudy Reyes, and new signing Chris Oliver) have an extremely impressive CV that includes some of the most hostile situations on the planet, no one seems to have explained to any of them that if you want someone to relax, a group of burly men bellowing ‘Relax!’ at them might not be the best way.
They also have a peculiar but persuasive tendency of listening to the recruits’ sob tales and advising them not to worry about things they can’t control before ordering a guard to put a bag over their head and take them away. It’s rough love, albeit with little of the ‘love’ component.
It’s not a huge surprise to say that there are no longer twenty recruits by the end of the first episode. More people will quit or be sent home in the following weeks. How does a chef fare against a professional wrestler? Is a firefighter better qualified to deal with a leech-infested jungle than a ballet dancer? Normally, we wouldn’t get an answer to these inquiries, but you will here.
This series is as muddy, gory, and nasty as ever, compelling, occasionally emotional, and frequently horrific, punctuated with comically cruel putdowns that the team must definitely have planned ahead of time. It will also make you want to visit Vietnam, but not with these people.
SAS Who Dares Wins – Jungle Hell will be aired on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm