Television series

Wipeout

Name: Wipeout
Genre: Comedy
Released: 2008
Cast: Jill Wagner, John Henson, John Anderson, Vanessa Lachey

The original American obstacle-course gauntlet: twenty-four contestants, one improbably vast course of foam, mud and physics-defying swinging balls, and hosts who never stop narrating the carnage. It's pure slapstick engineering — nobody gets hurt, everybody eats dirt, and the joy is entirely in watching gravity win. Ideal for switching your brain off with a grin on.

TVMaze rating

7.9

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The Japanese granddaddy of the whole genre — contestants in colourful jumpsuits getting launched, dunked and flattened by a castle full of deranged games, decades before Wipeout existed.

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Trades foam obstacles for genuine gross-out stunts and heights, but keeps the same appeal of watching regular people humiliate themselves for a cash prize.

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Something you would not have found on your own.

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Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock face above a city street, decades before foam pits existed — silent-era physical comedy built entirely on real, terrifying stunt work played for laughs.

But Silent film pacing and intertitles will feel alien if you're used to wall-to-wall commentary and modern editing.

Holey Moley2019

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But The golf gimmick is charming but slighter — less scale, less spectacle than the full-body chaos of Wipeout's course.

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Strip Wipeout's format to its skeleton — strangers competing under a countdown, eliminated one by one for an audience's entertainment — and this is what it looks like taken dead seriously.

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