Television - Who's got the best stunt work?

In a world of budget CGI and cut away shots who do you think has the best stunt scenes or fight choreography? I don't really love the show as a whole but The CW's Arrow continues to blow me away with the producer's willingness to abuse stuntmen instead of pasting a digital fireball on top of extras just falling over (*cough*cough* Legends of Tomorrow*cough*)



Sure its got the usual bad TV tropes ("Everyone attack him one at a time!"), but I've just got a bad habit of watching people hurt themselves.

 

Robert Conrad claimed to do almost all his own stunts on WWW. Many of the fistfight scenes (the easiest stunts to do, as they can be carefully choreographed) were RC vs 5 or 6 stuntmen.

A similar claim was made by, surprisingly enough, Don Adams (like Conrad, a former Marine). DA supposedly liked doing fight scenes so much he would have them added to scripts.

Both Robert Fuller and Burt Reynolds worked briefly as stuntmen.

Fuller broke his leg in a Wagon Train fight scene. He was lifted up (stunts always get more dangerous when you leave your feet) and thrown into a cantina chair -- due to bad prep, it wasn't a breakaway. I saw an interview RF did 40 years later where he claimed the leg still gave him serious pain.

I recently saw a Flipper w/Burt where he did a very impressive full body flipover move in a fight scene.

 

Into The Badlands. Final season begins next week. Beautifully filmed and the fight choreography is incredible.

 

That is a kick-ass show.

 

Netflix’s Daredevil deserves special mention for it’s season one ‘Hallway fight’. A single uncut steady cam shot. Can you imagine how exhausting this must have been to make? One guy makes a tiny mistake and you have to reset and start all over doing a choreography routine that burns eleventy-kajillion calories and makes you flip over seven guys that weigh 200lbs each


Which reminds me of the Tweet: “If I had never heard of superhero’s and you told me that one was a blind guy that beats people up with echolocation and the other was an adrenaline junky that fights crime with a rocket powered motorcycle and a grappling hook gun, I would be very confused and disappointed that the first was named Daredevil and the second Batman.”