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

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

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.