Dale Does BJJ

Anyone who's trained has met Dale. He's done one week, he's already asking about his black belt, and he's convinced he's ready for the streets. The whole show runs on his confidence, so the format is simple: each episode Dale tries something new and gets it gloriously wrong.

It's all filmed by his mate Jordan on his phone, and that one decision did most of the work. Handheld wobble, selfie flips and a lad cracking up behind the camera read as real straight away, and the realer it looks, the funnier Dale gets. Think Jackass meets The Inbetweeners.

Every character was cast like a real actor. I generated candidates, picked one, then locked him in with a headshot, a profile and a set of expressions. Every shot pulls from the same references, so a face never drifts between clips.

Dale had to look like a lad you'd actually see on the mats, with the brassy orange fringe, the patchy moustache, the spots and one diamond stud. Jordan is almost too cool to be his friend. The instructor is a calm Brazilian black belt with cauliflower ears, and Big Dai is a builder in hi-vis who only wanted his chips.

Dale's gi is a real Tatami Fightwear Pro Series, blue with the gold embroidery and a plain white belt, because BJJ people notice that stuff. It has its own reference, so the logos, patches and belt stay where they should in every shot, dry in the gym and soaked through after the puddle.

Big Dai's chips got their own reference too. They're the reason he's standing outside the shop in the first place.

The gym and the London street each have a top-down map and plates from every angle, so the camera can move around while the set stays exactly where it is. In the gym, the bags, the belt rack and the red timer are always on the same walls.

Outside, Golden Wing, the off licence next door and the shuttered shop with the graffiti hold their places however much Jordan's phone swings about. The rain helps too. Wet pavements and the warm light from the shop windows make it feel like a real grey afternoon in London.

Twelve clips were generated in Seedance 2.5 at native 1080p vertical, from 4 to 20 seconds each, then cut in Premiere Pro. The longer clips matter in comedy. They give a joke room to play out the way it would on a real phone, with the awkward bits left in.

Nobody in shot ever stands frozen waiting for their line either. The people training in the background keep rolling, Big Dai keeps eating his chips and the street keeps moving behind them, which is half of what makes it look like it really happened.

The captions, the Preece TV bug, the episode slate and the end card were all designed and burned in afterwards, so every episode looks like it came from the same channel.

It went out on Instagram on 29 October 2026 and did 13,095 views in its first three days, 90.8% of them from people who didn't follow the account. Viewers have already suggested no-gi, boxing, a comp, yoga and MMA for what Dale does next.