Opinion: Schapelle Corby wins over her haters on SAS Australia

SAS Australia is unlike any other reality juggernaut we have seen on Australian TV.

There are no prizes, no celebrity judges, no romance and no cooking.

There’s also nowhere to hide with cameras capturing the contestants’ sheer exhaustion during humiliating physical and psychological challenges from the SAS selection process designed to break even the most hardened soldiers.

The gruelling challenges are in all honesty sometimes hard to watch.

“I don’t care if they are celebrities in their world. They have chosen to enter our world,” says former British soldier and chief instructor Ant Middleton who assesses the celebrities’ grit and determination until they have had enough and voluntary withdraw.

“SAS selection is designed to break the most elite solider ... This is not a game,” he says.

The mind games start with the “contestants” stripped of their identities as they become known only by a number worn on an armband.

“We’re not a name. I won’t be the drug smuggler. I will just be a human being trying to do the best I can,” says Schapelle Corby, otherwise known as Number 9.

When it was announced Seven had managed to cast notorious convicted drug smuggler Corby, I was torn.

Sure, it was a stunning move for the network to lure Corby to front the cameras. But was it also exploiting someone who was still vulnerable following her time in Bali’s Kerobokan Prison?

But maybe the woman herself answered that question for me — out of the boundless offers she was sure to have received it was this very public venture she settled on.

“I think the public sees me as an attention seeking girl,” she says. “So why am I here? I want to find out who I am under all the years of suppression.”

And let’s be honest, who really isn’t interested to learn more about the real Schapelle?

After watching the first episode, it is clear that Corby is a winner already — emerging as an endearingly authentic character.

Corby sets herself apart from the ego-driven personalities from the worlds of sport, modelling and TV who she stars alongside.

“In jail, I have had three or four physical fights,” she admits before being asked to fight one of her castmates.

“I don’t like violence, but sometimes there is no other way to stop something from happening until you put your fists up and fight.”

You actually feel anxious for her as she enters the tactical questioning with a bag over her head where she is grilled about the incidents that landed her in the spotlight in the cliff-hanger of episode one which debuts on Monday night.

You want Corby to rise above these insane challenges. And no matter what you thought about her before, you want her to survive.