"Ultimate Force" is available to watch on Hulu
 

Dunno how many of y'all have seen it, but Excalibur is pretty much the only American I've ever met besides myself who knows this show. Anyway, Hulu recently made it available to watch online, and you can stream all four seasons, here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0334874/videogallery

And you can check out the IMFDB page here, if you wanna get a taste of the gun selection: :cool:

http://www.imfdb.org/index.php/Ultimate_Force

I recommend checking it out. The first two seasons, at least, were pretty good. Season 3, not so much. I haven't seen Season 4 yet (watching now).

Well, now I have something to do

I can thank the introduction to this series from an awesome Brit I went to college with. He was a Paratrooper and talked about reenlisting when college ended. He also was the one who introduced me to Airsoft as a sport than just an expensive hobby. You can see him somewhat in my profile page.


I really like Ultimate Force. After watching the Unit, it was nice to see a similar series out the other side of the world, except the difference is the British show has nothing to do with the soldier's girlfriends or wives and focused on how bad ass they are.

Damn, the SAS are hardcore, even their TV shows only serve to elevate their hardcoreness.

By god, this show is pure badassery

Why are there commercials every 5 minutes? Isn't hulu supposed to have very few commercial breaks?

Nope, not for Hulu. Depending on how long the episode is.

just started watching, I like it. Why was this never broadcast in america?

Because badassery isn't allowed on television

Since when do British TV shows in general get broadcast over here?

Apparently because this only ran for 4 very short seasons. I mean, each "season" had only like 5 episodes each before it got canceled and in the 3rd season, they didn't hire back some actors.

They all quit. Also, Chris Ryan (who conceived the show) left during that same time, which is why it became a lot less realistic.

The reason that there were so few episodes is because each episode was so expensive, while the overall budget was so small, that filming more than a half-dozen episodes per season would have been prohibitively expensive.

Yeah, I figured, but either way the first 2 seasons were very good with what they got

Minor issue: I just watched the Season 4 episode, "Dividing Line", where Red Troop teams up with some Green Berets to go into Afghanistan. Anyone notice that the American soldier at one point asks, "Where's my Minimi?" when Dave snatches the gun to play a joke on him? You'd think they would know that any American soldier would call it a "SAW".

Of course, since I'm pretty sure most of the "Americans" in that episode are played by Brits, anyway, I guess that explains why.

Seriously, it's like American films and TV perfectly make fun of Brits in introducing Brit characters, but when they try to mimic Americans, it's this cliche literal cowboy hat wearing, southern accent, and racist assholes.

Yeah, it was kinda annoying that they had to portray the Americans as "cowboys". That being said, their portrayal wasn't quite as bad as some other countries whose SF have appeared on the show. The French special forces were portrayed as crybaby pussies, while the Russian Spetsnaz were portrayed as incompetent and barbaric. In general, the portrayal of our guys on "Ultimate Force" is (relatively) positive.

EDIT: Just checked out IMDB, and it turns out I was wrong. The Americans in the "Dividing Line" are played by a mix of actual Americans and some Canadians.

That seems accurate

Jokes about French cowardice are kinda played out, bro.

Besides, I read a magazine article about GIGN once. They seemed pretty tough to me.

No, all the tough Frenchmen moved to America. They are known as Cajuns

I love how the gunshots on the show don't sound extremely fake like in other shows

That and the gun fights in general are pretty good. Too bad it took them until the 4th and final seasons to actually get the cast M4 style rifles that would fit the SAS's weapon choices. I understand M16s, but none of the primary combat rifles they use were accurate to what the SAS were using at the time unless this takes place in the 90s and then moved onto the 00s, which is still stupid. And season 4 to me being the weakest, they somehow managed to get new rifles.

Also about the rifles, it seems the fake M203s they use didn't even seem attached to the rifles, but more like they are strapped on

The Frenchies don't sound very French

Maybe it's harder for them to imitate French that to make fun of Americans.

Seriously, when I saw the guy with the cowboy hat, I chuckled a bit.

We have the literal cowboy, the black-hating-all-white-racist, the hardcore leader who was constantly trying to out frown Henno

Seriously, I can understand messing with the Americans by stealing their stuff, but how did Dave snatch the Minimi?


Also there's that one point where Jem stands over one of the American, who is dangling off a cliff. And "SPOILERS"...Did he cut the guy loose to fall on purpose? Seriously?





Funny thing where The Unit had a similar episode where they had to cross the border into Syria as well, except theirs were a rescue mission and the Ultimate Force were to take out a terrorist leader.

I like how in THAT episode where the terrorist leader speaks in plain english to his fellow terrorist, hardly hiding his british accent.

That guy Pete has PTSD BAD

Yeah, seriously.

Also, just like in The Unit, Pete also has a cheating wife who cheats on a superior officer, thought in Ultimate Force, the end is a different and short than what happened in The Unit

Just looked the site up on Wikipedia. Nobody lasts very long on that show, do they?

Except Henno. He's awesome

i can tell the show went the way of the unit.......but more drastically so. Went from cool realism to over the topness with rediculous fights.

At least in Ultimate Force we don't have any "Wives" characters to focus on. Sure this goes into stupid cliche military but at least it keeps the point of view on the military guys because they got no civilians to focus on.

I through series 1-3 and halfway through 4 between I just couldn't stand it anymore. It was clear the budget got slashed, and everything suffered. Series 1-2 were excellent, I highly recommend them. It just wasn't the same after they killed off half the cast. Having cast members leave gradually, like they did the first two series seems far more realistic.

I hope Hulu has captions. I have problems with British shows sometime because I have no idea what they're saying.

And does anything else think Henno is the British Michael Chiklis? Or is it just me?

They're bald and muscular, and they're both known for playing tough characters. Yeah, I guess that's pretty important.

The weird thing is I grew up watching Michael Chiklis in The Commish, so I was used to seeing him as a jolly family man. I was also shocked to learn he was only in his twenties when he did the Commish.

Yeah, that was before he started working out to do "The Shield". Back then, he was fat and balding and looked easily 10-15 years older than he was. He was almost the Paul Giamatti of the early-90s, IMO.