James Weir recaps SAS Australia: Hell Week 2021 | episode 1

This single mum has detailed the harrowing altercation she endured with her volatile ex that ended with her being charged with murder.

In the world of free-to-air television where great Aussie scripted dramas have now been replaced by a glut of mindless reality freak shows – all trying to one-up each other with shock value – we’ve now become desensitised and it’s impossible to get our attention anymo-

“Did you just piss your pants?” one of the SAS Australia: Hell Week soldiers points to the pee-stained trackies of one of the new contestants, just moments into Monday night’s premiere.

OK. Fine. I retract my previous statement.

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SAS Australia: Hell Week is a limited series that takes 14 everyday Aussies with regular lives and puts them through the torturous military training course that we’ve only previously seen celebrities endure on the Channel 7 series.

Fun fact: Hell Week actually runs over two weeks. Monday and Tuesday, this week and next. We’d expect nothing less from Hell Week. Only while enduring Hell Week would you find out that — surprise! — the torture secretly lasts a fortnight.

At first we were sceptical. What is SAS Australia without the celebrities? The whole premise and appeal of the show relies on the fact we get to see celebrities being pushed out of helicopters and then waterboarded until they tell us unheard secrets about their biggest scandals. Hey, producers – stop messing with the format!

But, it turns out, these normal people have their own scandals. Good ones, too. Suburban scandals. Like the kind in Liane Moriarty novels.

The craziest part about this whole thing is that these everyday normies aren’t even getting paid. Sam Burgess is slung a reported $150,000 to get tortured and humiliated on national television and these weirdos from the suburbs are clamouring to sign up for free?

When we first meet them, they’re all getting shuttled to base camp on a bus that’s then ambushed by soldiers who take them hostage.

“Welcome to hell,” one of the soldiers spits while kicking a random dad in the lower-back.

Ugh, we’ve missed the soldiers and their catty remarks.

Bonjour! Great to have ya back, doll!

One of the soldiers walks up to Bassim – a 32-year-old bodybuilder – and squints at the crotch of his blue trackpants. There’s a dark, damp-looking stain. The camera zooms in.

“You’ve p*ssed your pants,” the soldier spits.

Honestly, he’s just lucky they weren’t grey trackpants.

Bassim is then pushed off a crane and freefalls backwards into a river. At least no one will notice the pee-stain now.

See ya!

Everyone’s still wearing the regular outfits they arrived in and it’s clear that a lot of them didn’t think about practicality. Like Luke. He’s dressed to impress for the cameras and has worn his fancy Going Out Jacket. Real nice. Shearling coat. Tan faux suede with a sheepskin lining. The soldiers push him into the dank water while he’s wearing it and it’s instantly ruined.

Give it a rinse in the trough at base camp xx

Now that all their outfits are destroyed, the normies are then forced to strip naked and change into their uniform. In the celebrity version of the show, this is the stunt that always gets a lot of buzz. But this time it doesn’t have the same sense of excitement. Seeing regular people’s butts just isn’t the same as seeing celebrity butts.

Ugh, we’re not interested in the normies’ butts.

After everyone’s made to do a few star jumps, mum-of-two Lena has some kind of attack in the back of a Land Rover and can’t breathe. She’s promptly summoned for interrogation.

“This is really hard,” she gasps to the soldiers.

It’s only 40 minutes into Hell Week.

Lena is a fashion designer and business owner. When pressed about the reasons that led to her becoming a single mum, her answer is rich and nuanced: “My ex-husband is a c**t.”

But it’s a later relationship that has caused her the most pain. She details the brutal struggle of living with that man – the abuse and altercations. And the incident that led to his death – the one that saw her charged with murder.

“We came home from a party and he was a monster. He started attacking me and grabbed a saucepan and started hitting me,” she tells the soldiers.

“My two beautiful children — my son was three — he wrapped himself around my leg, and I was trying to protect his head. I was leaning against the kitchen bench. I shuffled to see what I could find. And there was a knife there. So I grabbed it and I held it to my chest … pointing out towards him. He ends up thrusting towards me and the tip of the knife went into his chest. I didn’t do any manoeuvre. I didn’t stab him.”

The knife was inserted about one centimetre, near his heart. She called Triple 0.

“The ambulance didn’t arrive. The cops did. A dozen of them,” she says.

“The police took my kids away. They cuffed me, put me in the garage and told me to shut up. They treated me like a criminal. And on the day of the funeral, two detectives came to my house and told me, ‘You’ve been charged with murder.’”

The harrowing experience ended with her being cleared.

Lena should be exempt from all further tasks and welcomed into the SAS immediately.

The story leaves the soldiers speechless. They weren’t ready for it. They thought it’d just be a regular ol’ interrogation – like the ones in the celebrity version of the show, where they get to spend 20 minutes insulting former Home And Away stars.

The closest they can get to that is with Bassim – the bodybuilder who peed his pants. Why? Hmmm … we’ll just let Bassim do the talking.

“I don’t just wanna look good, I wanna function just as good as I look,” he says of himself.

Oh boy.

Bring ‘em in! Tie ‘em to the chair!

“Watching you has been like watching an empty wetsuit blowing around,” one soldier snarls.

The other joins in.

“Tell us something interesting about yourself because at the moment, if I were to write something about you, it would be, ‘Boring c**t.’”

It’s brilliant. Insult comedy is alive and well!

But then the soldier gets too cocky with the barbs and embarks on a sassy remark without really knowing where he’s gonna land it.

“Make sure that today is the only bad day that you ever have on this course because, if not, I will whip that arm band off you quicker than you can f***in’ say … f***in’ … arm band,” he trails off.

Whoops. Yeah. Kinda lost steam at the end there.

Still. Bassim is destroyed. Just like Luke’s shearling coat.

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Originally published as James Weir recaps SAS Australia: Hell Week 2021 | episode 1