Physical: 100 is the ‘real-life Squid Game’ – and Netflix’s most meta show to date

A YouTuber, a prison guard and “the strongest man in Korea” walk into an arena. The set up for a joke? No. This is Physical: 100, a South-Korean reality show and Netflix’s latest hit, in which 100 of “the fittest people in Korea” compete in tests of ultimate strength. The cast consists of Olympic athletes and bodybuilders, mountain rescue workers and soldiers; all linked by their wealth of self-belief and lack of body fat. Unlike in deadly drama Squid Game, nobody actually dies in Physical: 100, but you wouldn’t know it from how seriously everyone takes these games.

When it dropped on Netflix on 24 January, Physical: 100 gained a cult following in South Korea, and has steadily risen up the global charts in the weeks since, securing the No 1 spot in the UK on Friday. As they watched, fans marvelled at the contestants’ intensity and grit, calling the show a “real-life” version of Squid Game. On paper, comparisons to Netflix’s stratospherically successful 2021 drama – still the platform’s most watched show ever – might seem reductive. But Netflix wants you to watch Physical: 100 and think of Squid Game. It’s there in the nail-biting atmosphere and the ominous visuals, from the moment the contestants stride in.

The players enter one by one, the dimly lit games room circular and symmetrical. They admire and praise each other’s sinewy bodies (everyone on the South-Korean fitness circuit clearly knows everyone). The audience is encouraged to do the same. It’s obvious that nobody is going to die, yet we’re told that they’re about to be put through “an extreme competition to survive” where “just one body will stand at the end” to win a cash prize.

Perhaps it’s the real-world implications of losing face that drives them forward, but the contestants compete like each game is a matter of life and death. In a one-on-one game, where they wrestle each other with the aim of being in possession of a ball at the end of a countdown, they encourage each other to “go for the throat”. Hair flies. Their limbs slide through mud and sand. In another, where they dangle for as long as they can from a high metal structure above a swimming pool, the water beneath might as well be lava, judging by their reluctance to lose. And in one particularly uncomfortable battle, a male contestant pins a woman down with his knee on her chest. She thrashes beneath him, while the other contestants whisper that she won’t be able to breathe. On Takeshi’s Castle or Total Wipeout, contestants hurled themselves at big red balls and a comedy bounce sound effect played. Here, that silliness is gone. It’s kill or be killed.

Look elsewhere on Netflix and you’ll see why the streamer wants to capitalise on Squid Game’s success. Filming is currently underway on Squid Game: The Challenge, a reality show based explicitly on the K-drama. At a former RAF base in Bedford, 456 contestants from around the world will compete in a series of gruelling challenges from the show, an eye-watering £3.7m up for grabs. It’s Squid Game brought to life – just without all the murder at the hands (or eyes) of a creepy killer doll.

Physical: 100 feels like a smaller scale test run. In the fictional Squid Game, the players are random people desperate enough to risk their lives, where The Challenge is naturally going to attract Type As who think they have a good chance of winning. Netflix knows viewers will watch Physical: 100 and make the connection to Squid Game, stoking future interest in The Challenge and getting people talking about their biggest hit again, 16 months after it was released.

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From cutting down on password-sharing to cancelling shows seemingly at random, Netflix is on a ferocious profit-making mission. That’s why we’re seeing more sequels and spin-offs (a la Bridgerton) and reliance on Netflix-owned IP – and you won’t get anything more reliable than their biggest ever show, Squid Game.

It’s been joked that Netflix’s Christmas films exist in their own fictional, inter-connected world, and we’ve seen it in the reality TV genre too. Contestants from Too Hot to Handle have shown up on The Circle, while Physical: 100 player Cha Hyun-seung has already appeared on Netflix’s Single’s Inferno. The cast of Netflix’s newest dating series Perfect Match all come from their shows like Love is Blind and The Mole – it’s not even out yet and people are already calling it “Squid Game for dating”. This is the Netflix cinematic universe and we’re all just living in it.

‘Physical: 100’ is out now on Netflix