Squid Game is a real Colosseum spectacle for the modern age

A series of childhood games, 456 players and a one multimillion dollar cash prize. To win, you need skill, a cutthroat mentality, and a little bit of luck too.

- Jennifer Cartwright

This is Squid Game, the smash-hit Korean drama which sees fictional characters take part in an emotionally excruciating competition for the sake of entertainment.

It's also Squid Game: The Challenge, the reality TV spin off where this time the contestants are ordinary people.

Kitted out in green tracksuits and white plimsoles, Squid Game: The Challenge players look as if they've just stepped off the set of the original show.

At the start, many don't believe they'll win the prize so they treat their time for what it is - the ultimate fan experience.

They'll sleep in the dim dormitory, play games in the bright arenas and make a memory documented forever on Netflix. It looks like a whole lot of fun - or at least to begin with it does.

When players start to progress further through the Challenge, winning the entire show gradually starts to seem like a real possibility to them.

The odds are no longer 1/456 but now 1/100, 1/50, 1/10. As players begin to feel the weight of the imagined $4.56m in their pockets and fantasise what they'd spend it on, the show grows brutal.