Takeshi’s Castle is back! UK television gets its best ever version of the Japanese gameshow

Right you are, Ken.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Introduced by the Tokyo Broadcasting System in 1986, the show was essentially a series of wildly difficult physical challenges at which people haplessly flung themselves, risking injury, humiliation or at least a mouthful of off-puttingly dirty-looking water.

Shows such as Total Wipeout, Ninja Warrior, Ultimate Beastmaster – and even Jackass – took Takeshi’s blueprint for elaborate stunts and ran with it.

When we first heard of Takeshi’s Castle, it was on clip shows hosted by Clive James and Chris Tarrant which largely existed to inform British people that foreigners were weird.

The next incarnation was in the form of heavily edited versions that ran on Challenge TV, with a Craig Charles voiceover, and was much more interested in all the accidents than anything approaching a cohesive format.

Not sneered at by Chris Tarrant, or packaged with a culturally insensitive “oriental riff” influenced theme tune.

The success of Netflix’s Old Enough last year should be proof that global audiences are now sophisticated enough to enjoy non-scripted Japanese shows without having their hands held via the medium of jokey commentary.

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