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Why I Love...Takeshi's Castle

A contestant plays a game on Takeshi's Castle.
  • Posted at 11:26am
  • 16 November 2007
  • by JonMount-RT

Weary of Strictly Come Dancing's waltz, or Paul O'Grady's schmaltz? John Torode skewering a MasterChef student isn't your scene? OK, you get the idea. If you come home exhausted from work and can't face hard news, soft soap, or your kids bingeing on Tracy Beaker re-runs, there is an alternative. Bubbling away in the stranded backwaters of the early-evening Freeview schedules is Takeshi's Castle, a game show of two halves with numerous guilty pleasures.

Japan has long excelled at this kind of shiny, disposable programming - Clive James frequently showed extracts of Japanese game-show contestants enthusiastically enduring all manner of painful indignity in his global television clipfests for LWT. Now, thanks to Virgin 1, we can see one from the late 1980s in a snappy recycled form, bursting with hip retro graphics, instant replays and overlaid with an out-there English-language commentary from Red Dwarf star Craig Charles. And what richly rewarding incongruity this creates.

The game itself most resembles a kind of muddy It's a Knockout for Japanese businesspeople. Dodging missiles while negotiating a flimsy footbridge over a murky lake; searching for the exit door to a maze of budget hotel-sized rooms while pursued by rotund, garishly garbed wrestlers; hanging on to a flying giant mushroom for dear life. These are the kind of challenges that the spirited, air-punching, cheery contestants embrace. All for the chance of a final water-cannon showdown in armoured beach buggies with the Emerald Guard of Count Takeshi.

And in case you're wondering, Takeshi actually is Takeshi Kitano, best known here as an actor and one of the most exciting directors in world cinema. But in Japan it is rare to watch TV for more than 15 minutes without the former stand-up comedian popping up in one of his many local media guises. Unfortunately, all you'll see here are occasional glimpses of a youthful Kitano as his comic interludes have been cut from the British version to make way for non-stop contestant action.

But what unintentionally cool fashion plates these contestants make. Uniqlo-type sportswear, customised kimonos, Bjorn Borg tennis headbands, crash-helmets appliquéd with cute animé characters, and sumo wrestler's underpants are thrown together with casual chic abandon and tested to destruction. A look to make a fashion magazine stylist purr.

If that weren't enough, the slapstick action is filtered through the unpredictable, free-associating comic sensibilities of Craig Charles. His cascading scouse witticisms suggest the liver bird plucked him from his pram as an infant and dipped his tongue in the Mersey, possibly near a sewage outlet. The innuendo of his commentary is moderated though by the wide-eyed admiration for the perpetually optimistic contestants as they hurl themselves toward the next obstacle with little thought for life, limb or logic under the encouraging eye of the show's Sgt Pepper-costumed, sword-thrusting master of ceremonies, General Lee.

Not that this stops Charles from slipping into unmotivated soul-brother sermons better suited to his BBC 6 Music funk show or from reciting the Absurdist maxims of his "Old Dad". Thankfully we are spared the sight of an on-screen Charles dressed up as a Japanese schoolgirl or a drunken samurai. Something the commentators seem to go in for in the French version of the show.

But, finally, the most beautiful thing about Takeshi's Castle is that sooner or later everyone falls down, and nobody ever seems to win (come to think of it most of Kitano's films are like that too, although with a lot more guns, blood and, er, tap dancing, obviously). Now if only the production company could be persuaded to reinstate all the scenes featuring Takeshi Kitano himself and get them dubbed by Hollywood actor Bill Murray… That really would be sublime.

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