Unbreakable
1/8 Five, monday - 9:00pm - 10:00pm "Pain is glory!" bellows a jungle warfare type at a bunch of hard nuts who want to prove that they can't be cracked. It's the latest masochistic reality series, overseen by Benedict Allen, who "over eight epic weeks" of tests will present the contestants' struggle to decide who's toughest. They start in the Guyanan rainforest or, as the deliciously over-the-top narration puts it, "the green hell of the Amazon . . . a billion boiling acres of savage jungle" . Not to be outdone, the instructor calls it "Satan's garden" and seems to have appointed himself Beelzebub, devising nasty tortures, such as biting piranha fish to death. In one strange scene Allen whips the backs of the contestants with a bamboo swatch while they beat wooden claves together. It's verging on the kinky, but sadly it lacks the sense of fun you get in the ripest reality TV.
radiotimes
