Warriors

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Mark

I watch very little TV and what I do watch consists of comedy and history programmes with some NCIS and The Unit thrown in for good measure. A show I am watching at the moment, well recording and watching, is a show called Warriors on the History Channel. It represents one of the extremely rare tv shows that I decided to watch based on the advertising for it. The premise of the show is perfect for me, the host Terry Schappert, sets out to examine a warrior culture by getting hands on with their weapons and illustrating how these warriors fought.

Ok there is a “boys toys” side to the show but what makes it so great is that Terry is stupidly enthusiastic and as a former green beret he gets stuck in. Where in other shows the host would hold a sword, talk about it and then a couple of actors demonstrates it, Terry goes toe to toe with a expert himself. What is great about this is that one second he is going full pelt sparring with a dude with a sword and then just stops to address the camera without giving the guy trying to hit him any indication, it is amazing he doesn’t get hurt more often. By more often I mean in one episode when he was sparring with a Aztec axe he sliced a great lump out of his leg when he got too enthusiastic on his backswing! The show usually takes a famous battle in the culture as its example and shows you what weapons they used and why they were fighting.

The idea is to compare these cultures with the modern interpretation of a soldier and the fact that Terry is not able to master many of the weapons he is presented with only serves to further the shows respect for the culture in focus. It doesn’t set out to glamorize war but it tries to show that none of these cultures were stupid.

There is a also show on Bravo at the moment called Deadliest Warrior but after watching one episode i decided it wasn’t for me. It asked the question “Who would win in a fight between a ninja and a Spartan” and through “scientific tests” and a so called advanced computer simulator (seemingly an excel spreadsheet) seeks every week to determine who would win a fight between two iconic warriors cultures. This show is all about weapon envy and bravado, where they attack ballistic gel dummies in order to determine which warrior causes the most physical damage. At the end of the day they are weapons, they are meant to hurt you, I don’t need to be shown that a spear to the chest is going to kill me- I already gathered that. The stupidity of the show is demonstrated by the fact that in the US they aired and episode looking into who would win in a fight between the IRA and the Taliban.

Where as Warriors tries to highlight how these cultures came by these weapons either through design or circumstances, and how they fought with them, Deadliest warriors just says “this big sword’s gonna f you up isn’t that cool!”

Warriors is on at 8pm, Tuesday nights on the History channel in the UK.