Review: 'Team Ninja Warrior'

Some television shows develop an audience in a truly viral manner. The series starts small, almost dumped on the air without much fanfare. A small audience finds it and through word of mouth it grows into something no one could have anticipated.

That's certainly been the case with AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR. The series began as almost an afterthought on the now shuttered tech channel G4. The network had been airing episodes of the Japanese competitive series SASUKE and they decided to put together an Americanized version of the show that would send the top American prospects to Japan to compete. That soon became the network's most popular original program and in season four, the contestants stopped going to Japan and instead tackled a special stage four constructed in Las Vegas.

When G4 became Esquire several years ago, AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR shifted to NBC, with Esquire airing next-day reruns. And given the continuing popularity of the show, it's no surprise that Esquire has finally launched its own companion series. But it is a pleasant surprise to discover that TEAM NINJA WARRIOR is just as entertaining as the mother series.

The premise of AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR is pretty simple. Athletes compete to complete a series of obstacles in the shortest amount of time. There are four stages in all and if you finish stage four first, you win $1,000,000.

What makes the show a blast to watch is the difficulty of the challenges and the randomness of the success. One slight miscalculation can end your season and until this past season, no American had ever completed all four stages. ANW is also a gender-neutral competition. Women are able to compete, but on the same terms as the men. And while no woman has gotten into the later stages, they have made impressive progress.

TEAM NINJA WARRIOR pits 24 teams of three contestants against each other in a round robin-style set of brackets. Each team must contain one woman, but otherwise there are no guidelines for how the teams are chosen. The 28 teams compete head-to-head, one athlete at a time from each team. The team who wins the most points moves on, although to be fair, the point system makes it reasonably easy for the entire round to end up tied and thrown into a sudden death match-up.

Fans of ANW will love the show because it's another chance to see their favorite contestants compete and do so in a way that doesn't come off as just some weird brand extension of the show (like the dull USA VS THE WORLD specials). This is a new hybrid and with many of the contestants finishing within a step of their opponent, the show is crammed with adreneline-fueled drama.

If you haven't seen AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR, you can dive right into series without any problems. The format is straight-forward and each episode provides enough back-story on the contestants so you'll feel caught up.

I frankly wasn't expecting much from TEAM NINJA WARRIOR, but I was wrong. This is a great addition to the NINJA WARRIOR franchise and I can see it becoming an annual event. Even better for Esquire, it gives the cable channel its own version of ANW juggernaut to call its own. So this is one of the rare times when everyone should leave happy at the end of the season.

TEAM NINJA WARRIOR premieres on Tuesday, January 19th, 2016 at 8/7c on the Esquire Network.