TV Review: Sanctuary is a visceral show about sumo wrestling - where you care about the characters

A juvenile delinquent becomes a sumo apprentice and finds himself on a collision course with a voiceless wrestler carrying a secret, in Santcuary

Sanctuary (Netflix) takes all the glamour out of sumo wrestling. I thought sumo was two over-nourished Japanese gents in giant nappies being respectful to each other as each tried to push the other one out of a ring. It had an air of the exotic about it, as if we were being offered a glimpse into Japanese culture that we could never understand.

There’s none of that in Sanctuary, at least not so far. It’s just a bunch of younger blokes getting bullied in a sumo ‘stable’ as it’s translated in the subtitles.

Its focus is on Enno, a tough kid who thinks he can get rich quick with sumo, without putting in the work, which is mainly about building up the competitor's legs so they get good at pushing. His disrespect for tradition gets him in trouble, and yes that involves being told he has to break up one of the older wrestler’s poos because it is too big to flush down the jacks. But bullying flows downhill so Enno gives the jobbie to Shimizu, the weakest wrestler in the place.

Sorry if that ruined your breakfast, but Sanctuary is a full-on visceral, with no shortage of blood and sweaty sand.

It’s also a bit like Home and Away. A female reporter, Kunishima, is doing a story on the sumo stable. She sees Enno getting bullied and decides that something has to get done — she is so obviously a love interest for the bad boy that you’d half expect Alf Stewart to pop in from Home and Away and call everyone a flaming mongrel.

But it works. Sanctuary passes the oldest story sniff test in the book — you care about the characters and want to know what happens to them.

Enno is an overgrown grumpy teenager, but you feel for him. We go back in time to learn that his parents’ happy marriage disintegrated after they lost a lot of money, part of the reason he agrees to give sumo a go. (There are a few timeshifts so you have to stay awake. I’m coming around to timeshifts now in TV shows, they keep you focused so you can’t look at your phone.)

Meanwhile, in the parallel universe newspaper world, we find out that the journalist Kunishima is doing the sumo story as a punishment for messing up in her job.

It’s a decent set-up for the rest of the series. Look, this isn’t the best TV show I’ve seen in a while, or anything like it. I’m too old for the Home and Away young-adults-fighting-adversity vibe and some of the storytelling is a bit clunky. But it shines a harsh light on toxic masculinity and macho norms that probably still rule in a lot of professional sports.

Enno is a real character, angry, hurt, and looking for someone to point him in the right direction. It’s funny too when it wants to be. The first episode ends with Enno practising his pushing in the sanctuary: he’s decided to give it a go. I hope he makes it.