Well, have your balls descended back out of your body yet? Netflix’s Skyscraper Live has been and gone, and it may well qualify as the single most stressful viewing experience on record. Alex Honnold’s unassisted ascent of the 508 metre Taipei 101 was an absolutely extraordinary achievement. Whether or not it represents the future of television, though, is a completely different matter.
Honnold’s work is already well-known. As the star of Free Solo – a feature documentary once again so nerve-racking that the only way to comfortably enjoy it was under the influence of industrial sphincter relaxants – he has long been the poster boy of people climbing up stuff without ropes.
But the difference between Free Solo and Skyscraper Live is vast. The former was a meticulously structured account of his attempt to climb El Capitan unaided, edited to wring out the maximum level of drama possible. The latter was just footage of him climbing up a building for an hour and a half. Obviously, the risk factor for the viewer was amplified enormously, because – unlike Free Solo, which could have been retroactively reedited in the event of an accident – Skyscraper Live had nowhere to hide.
However, an hour and a half is a long time to watch anything. And in the case of Skyscraper Live, you were essentially watching a guy repeat the same set of movements hundreds of times in a row. You invariably kept finding yourself zoning out a little, maybe checking your phone or going to make a cup of tea, because the human mind simply wasn’t designed to sustain a state of panic for that long. In effect, the act of watching Skyscraper Live was like taking a long-haul flight in turbulent weather, with long periods of boredom spiked with moments of sheer panic.
At least Honnold and his team can be congratulated for picking an incredibly dramatic skyscraper to climb. Taipei 101 seems like it was custom-made for this sort of thing, consisting of three clear stages that aggressively ramp up in terms of difficulty. There were heights. There were overhangs. Towards the end, at the first part of the structure’s spire, there was a moment when Honnold had to climb outwards at a 45-degree angle, up a portion of building that didn’t appear to have much for him to hold on to. I just watched it back – having seen it once and knowing how it ends – and my palms instantly became sweaty. Even watching him stand up straight at the summit gave me the same sort of fizzy-tummy panic you get when you see that your toddler has got into the knife drawer.
Which is to say that it was exceptional, but also: should we really be making entertainment predicated on the possibility that someone might die? Because as much as you can admire Honnold’s athleticism and pluck, you watched Skyscraper Live for the jeopardy of it. Even if you pushed it all the way down to the pit of your stomach, a tiny part of you knew that you were tuning in to the possibility that he might slip and fall to his death.
There are plenty of events where this is implied – I maintain that most of the people who watch Formula One do so for the crashes – but there was something gaudily explicit about this. The closest example I can think of is when Red Bull paid Felix Baumgartner to jump from a height of 24 miles in 2012. There was the same giddy excitement leading up to the broadcast of the jump. And then, when he entered an uncontrolled, life-threatening spin after 90 seconds, there was the same sense of grim self-examination. You realised that you were simply a rubbernecker, tuning in to the macabre possibility that something would go wrong.
I suspect that isn’t how Netflix wants to market itself – Home of People Plummeting Off Buildings (and Stranger Things) – which means that Skyscraper Live should remain a one-off.
If it decides to capitalise on the success of this by commissioning more live events that could result in the death of a human being – Free Diving Live, or Rooftop Parkour Live, or even Eating a Steak Sandwich Without Chewing It Properly Live – it runs the risk of turning the future of television into a Victorian freak show. It’s better than that. And, besides, my sphincter couldn’t take it.
• Skyscraper Live is on Netflix now.
