Modern Times: Weekend Warriors (BBC2) followed a collection of blokes who had signed up for Tough Mudder, one of those extreme, military-style obstacle courses aimed at middle-aged men who have a bone to pick with life. It sounds a great idea for a programme, if not for a weekend.
I once put my name down for one of these things in a spirit of journalistic inquiry, but after reading about an obstacle involving a long crawl through a choice of narrow pipes, not all of which were open at the far end, I threw my wristband in the bin. It sounded like a metaphorical recreation of a midlife crisis, not a cure.
Of course, it’s the man, and not the obstacle, that furnishes the drama. Forty-eight year old PR specialist Chris, for example, decided to get in shape after coming out of a long relationship. Graham found himself divorced, alone and in need of rebuilding. Co-workers Darren and Dave, 44 and 34, are getting in some male bonding across a decade age gap. Jonathan and George are trying to repair their father-son thing. The idea is that Tough Mudder fosters self-worth and teamwork, because it’s a challenge, rather than a race. Except for Sean.
Sean, a personal trainer who left the army after his hair started falling out from stress, was in it to win. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Proper itching.” Those were meant to be taken as symptoms of his determination, and not just symptoms. Sean was facing two problems in his quest for victory. First, there was a guy called Connor, who was better than him. Second, it really isn’t a race – there’s no prize for coming first. The extent to which Sean missed this key point can be gauged by the fact that he went off to buy a prize to award himself when he won. He had a little trouble finding the appropriate medal for the winner of a race that isn’t meant to be a race. “It all depends on how much you want to spend,” said the man at the medal shop.
In the end, Luke Sewell’s film was a remarkably sincere exploration of the kinds of ordinary crises that drive men to haul themselves through mud and fire, to climb walls and swim through ice cubes in search of redemption. Along the way, it quietly dispelled a lot of myths about middle-aged men: that they have no real perspective on their inner lives; that they are emotionally inarticulate; that they don’t discuss personal issues with one another.
Here are Dave and Darren, Essex builders, on male body image:
Dave: “Women always seem to want an unfat bloke, like a slim or buff bloke, but when it’s the other way round, it seems to be …”
Darren: “When you get to be my age, mate, you just disappear into the background. You don’t really get noticed by anybody.”
To hear Graham speak openly about separation and loneliness with his mechanic was both reassuring and heartbreaking, although perhaps not as heartbreaking as seeing him in the house he was renovating for the family he no longer has. “Obviously it’s not a great place to be in by yourself,” he said. He had only recently realised that he had entered the Tough Mudder to punish himself.
The only cipher in the film was Connor, extremely fit and seemingly untroubled, who beat Sean to win his seventh Tough Mudder non-race. Sean gave him the medal he had bought for himself – a surprisingly touching moment.
It should be pointed out that a lot of women enter the Tough Mudder. They were at the corners of the film, smiling and conquering obstacles for what remained unexplored reasons. Graham fell in with a group of them early on, and they got him through it.
Nothing about this film made me want to try being a weekend warrior, but it turns out I can derive a lot of personal satisfaction from watching other men crawl though muddy water under hanging wires delivering electric shocks. By the end, I was extremely hungry. And proper itching.
It’s hard to think of anything that engenders less anticipation than the words “Next time, on The Cube”, but the perspex-bound gameshow (ITV) is now in its ninth series of awarding people large sums of money for doing the kinds of things a monkey would do for a banana. Last night’s opener featured Keith, the show’s oldest ever contestant. “Not that that means anything at all, really,” said Phillip Schofield. It certainly didn’t to viewers, because they never told us how old Keith was. Age didn’t seem to affect his ability to balance blocks or guess how long 10 seconds was, in exchange for £20,000. Needs more mud.
