MUMBAI: AXN's major ground initiative for last year involved an India Pakistan Xtreme challenge. The aim was to pit a team of Indians against a team from Pakistan in a series of mental and physical tests.

The initiative had kicked off with the preliminary rounds in five cities from August. The finale was held in Taiwan. Now the broadcaster will air the five episode event every Sunday at 8:30 pm from 23 January with repeats every Tuesday at 9 pm.

Viewers will see contestants crawling on hands and feet through muck, tightening a nut and bolt inside a box filled with over 1000 cockroaches. They will also participate in a stress test.

The two teams had four participants each. Assistant VP AXN and Animax India marketing and sales Rohit Bhandari said, "To avoid giving any sort of home advantage to the participants, we had decided to do the Xtreme Challenge at a neutral venue. Hence the selected finalists were taken to Taiwan.

"This is the biggest programming and production effort ever undertaken by AXN. We had an overwhelming participation for AXN Xtreme: India vs. Pakistan and massive support from viewers and advertisers alike."

As in similar action-adventure events - Extreme Dhamaka and Who Dares Wins the challenges were revealed to the participants only on the event day to retain the element of surprise, to stimulate creativity given the limitations, and most importantly, to have a level playing field. This way none of the teams were disadvantaged prior to the start of the event.