Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge and The Final Table

Competing as teams!

Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge (Season 1)

I've never seen the original Spartan games, but in this format three squads each made up of two men, two women and one ranked spartan (from the solo version) race through an obstacle course using fitness and teamwork. Three races take place each episode, but they only show the "featured" race followed by the finals race where the two winners of the earlier races are joined by the 2nd place team with the fastest time. I guess even the producers realized that showing people doing the same things over and over could get repetitive but thankfully the teams have enough charisma to keep viewers engaged for eight episodes. Netflix doesn't have season two available so maybe they too thought "eight episodes of this is enough for anybody".

The Final Table

In this show 24 established chefs from around the world work in pairs to prepare the best dish based on whatever cuisine the current episode is focused on, judged by celebrities and foodies from that same region. The three worst dishes then compete using the selected featured ingredient of the region and makers of the worst dish are eliminated. It's a fast format which is pretty neat, but its only the final four that ever have to compete individually. Recommended for Masterchef fans but as the episodes are on the longer side, I suggest watching at 1.25x speed (it makes their knife skills superhuman too lol).