Participants in a reality show that sent them to live in the Scottish Highlands for a year, cut off from the rest of the world, have emerged from the end of it to find that nobody was watching.
In March last year, the UK‘s Channel 4 sent 23 volunteers off into the wild for its show ‘Eden‘. It was billed as a social experiment: “What if we could start [society] again?”
But 12 months later, the remaining ten contestants returned to civilisation to find out that Brexit had happened, Donald Trump was president, and literally nobody was watching their show. It had been taken off air.
The Guardian reports that only four episodes of the show – covering March, April and May 2016 – were screened, with viewing figures dropping form 1.7 million to 800,000.
And tbqh with you, I cannot see for the life of me why. Those 13 people who left the show? They weren’t eliminated. They dropped out thanks to “sexual jealousy, infighting and hunger”, which seems to me the basis for every reality show ever created.
Channel 4 had been extremely secretive about people leaving the show, with UK media relying on locals and suddenly active Twitter accounts to piece the whole thing together.
One of the volunteers – an outdoor instructor called Tom Wah – wrote on Twitter that he left because “it wasn’t what I was told it was going to be, what you see on TV is all bullshit.” Surely somebody told him this before he signed up to reality TV, no?
But perhaps it was never meant to be. Scottish paper The National – who published a piece in December last year asking if “there was trouble in paradise” – wrote that things started out well enough.
“The gang built a giant teepee in which to hold meetings, and agreed on their priorities and working hours. Those with particular skills – tree-chopping, soil-turning, goat-herding – helped others develop their own. They had an experienced chef, several medics, a vet and a hunter, not to mention a carpenter, a plumber, a marine conservationist and, um, a yoga teacher.”
But they quickly devolved.
“There was also Tara, who billed herself as a life coach but turned her hand to giving massages before storming out, alleging bullying and branding her campmates a bunch of ‘pussies, dicks and assholes’.”
Well, we’ve all been there.
Photo: Channel 4.
