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March 29, 2024, 07:29:51 AM

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Alone - the reality TV competition (History Channel)

Started by phes, June 08, 2019, 12:26:47 PM

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phes

Contestant spends 25 years 'building towards this moment': bush-craft, survival, fitness, hunting, 15 years in the desert commandos, built own house, can start fire with Y-fronts and a cotton bud etc. Slips on algae, breaks coccyx and airlifted home in 12 hours (invented as exemplar)

I'm not really a thread starter but I can't find anyone irl who watches this masterpiece, a contender for greatest TV reality competition of all time

It's like all those other survival shows but not shit, because they're actually properly alone in an inhospitable environment with nothing but camera equipment and a number of items selected from a list of regulation items. Then we watch them hurt themselves, starve and go mad.

Season 6 started last night, in the Arctic. They usually begin in autumn but the snow was blowing in within 4 days of them arriving. Dead soon etc

Season 1 (only men in this one, sadly. But a great season)

https://youtu.be/SrowegT_sOc

Most recent season:

https://youtu.be/gu3kCZgrlSA


Am i, err, Alone here?

jobotic

How should I spend 25 years preparing for a programme that won't be commissioned for 23 years?

By learning to live without water i reckon.

phes

Most people find a way to procure drinkable water so with a couple of notable exceptions, food and sanity tends to be the problem

Looks like i'm drawing faces on round objects again for season 6

Noodle Lizard

A bit late, but I'm here too!

Just started season 6 myself. The most arrogant one just got the shits and had to leave. Quality telly.

phes

Wahey! Great to hear that someone else has got to enjoy this series. It's definitely had its peaks and troughs and it's always going to be hard to surpass the originality of the first series. It's such a simple show that I often wonder where can they go with this? Guess it lives or dies on the characters they recruit and overall I think they've done an excellent job of avoiding the pitfalls of exploiting the sort of characters who often apply for reality shows, whilst still keeping it entertaining. The most memorable participants do seem to be earlier in the run, though that may be on account of the show being fresh to me.

S7 is several episodes in and it's been pretty good so far. This season they've capped the time and made meeting it a requirement, but at 100 days! So multiple winners are possible, or none. I suspect they don't think anyone will make the 100 and are going for a bit of a reset

thugler

Love this show, absolutely smashed through all the seasons. The interesting thing about it is that it's often not the best skilled people who win, but the ones that are mentally just obsessed with winning and will put up with any old shit. One series there's a female competitor who absolutely breezes through and seems to be eating well and absolutely fine, but she suddenly just decides to go home when things slightly start to go wrong. Also the guy who just shat himself about 2 hours in and decides he's going home, when in his pre amble he was all macho 'there is no quit in me, they'll have to pull me out of there'

phes

I'll spoiler it as I guess it counts as a spoiler but one surefire thing that has me writing anyone off as potential winners (and this also applies to The Amazing Race) is anyone in the forces or the police force. They always give it the big I AM about what incredibly difficult environments they've had to survive but I have never once seen one of them win, or even come close. Maybe they're just poorly adapted to being alone

Always suspicious of people who have a lot of projects on the go. Seems to keep them going and distract them for a time but once they lose the energy or run out of ideas there's nothing left

Bence Fekete

Glad I checked this out.

Only half-way through season one and it's proper hilarious. I'm finding the overall madness and wry, sensationalist editing just the perfect distillation of man's inferiority to nature. The otherwise pathetic minor victories ('today I've made a spoon!'), the Kurtz monologues. Blarvellous.

Noodle Lizard

We've gone back through season 1-3 and it's fucking ace. Best reality show on at the moment, I reckon, even though it's devoid of most of the standard conceits of the genre (compared with Survivor, Naked & Afraid etc.) It's basically Survivorman, but with more emphasis on thriving in a hostile environment for up to a year rather than simply surviving for a week.

Still, it's fun to "play" it like a traditional reality show. It's fun to root for some and against others - a couple of them really are twats. We also like to place bets on who'll be out first from their introductory VTs alone. I've been right two out of three times. To corroborate what phes said, a good rule of thumb is to remember that military types tend to be far less prepared for it than they like to think, despite how tough or experienced they may seem. The military certainly does put you in survival or wilderness situations, but you're often accompanied and armed to the teeth.

Conversely, the winner really does seem to be anyone's guess. I've been pretty surprised by some of the results.

Noodle Lizard

I don't know how spoiler-heavy we're allowed to get here. There are a lot of specific things about specific contestants I'd like to discuss, but since it seems like a lot of people still have yet to discover the show I'll hold off for now. I know I'd be furious if I'd had any of the winners (or tappers, for that matter) spoiled for me. You really do get invested in it.

Noodle Lizard

This show is ace, though. Onto season 4 now, and even the "twist" in that season hasn't dampened our enjoyment of it.

My wife bought me a ferro rod on the back of it and I've learned how to start a proper fire with it. Growing up in South-East England, I never learned to do any of this stuff or even went camping properly, I'm way behind my American contemporaries. We're thinking of taking some local survival courses an' all - just for fun, like. I won't be off to Vancouver Island or even Walden Pond anytime soon, but watching this show whilst living in a relatively remote area constantly on the precipice of a big earthquake (as well as "everything else" that's going on) has made me realise I should learn some very basic things about how to deal with nature.