Last man Standing – awesome TV

Last night, I was flicking through the TV channels quite aimlessly (as you do) trying to find something good to watch.  It was 21:00 and I flicked onto BBC3 – a channel I never really watch, and I saw that Last Man Standing was about to start.  I stopped where I was and the next hour was some of the best television I’ve seen in a long time.

For the uninitiated, here’s some of the details about what exactly Last Man Standing is all about. 

Last Man Standing dares a unique group of western adventurers to accept the challenge of a life-time. To travel the world, and compete against some of the most remote tribes on earth… on their own turf. . .

The athletes go into each event blind – so no advance preparation is possible. They’re trained by a local expert and then compete by the rules of the tribe.  At the end of each competition tribal judges declare the winner – that week’s Last Man Standing.  The overall winner will be whoever has won the most titles after all ten events. – BBC.CO.UK

There are six athletes on the show, three are from the UK and three are from the US.  Although they are ultimately completing against each other, they are brought together by the fact that they are in totally alien cultures.

Meet the athletes

This week’s episode saw the group go to Ethiopia and take part in Suri stick fighting.  The rules are that you use a 7-foot stick to batter the crap out of your opponent.  You win by drawing blood, knocking your opponent down or forcing them to give up.

Spoilers!!!!

This week was amazingly brutal.  Jarvis was ruled out before he even got going due to illness.  The others started training.  Immediate impressions were that Wolé picked it up quite quickly, opting for power over finesse.  Ed looked OK with his fencing background.  Murray looked fairly carefree which seemed to work.  The stick fighting looked like the sort of thing where fear could really end up getting you hurt.  I thought JJ looked pretty good in his fighting as well, with Joey looking the weakest – although you wouldn’t believe it if you listened to him.

In the end the local trainer only allowed the three Brits to go through, saying the remaining two Americans were not up to it.  There seemed to be some tension between Wolé and the other two Brits.  In the end, Wolé won a controversial decision in the final between he and Ed.  Which seemed to annoy the other competitors.

The episode was awesome and I will definitely be watching the rest of the series.  Check out more info here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lastmanstanding/