How a reality TV show went horribly wrong
How a survival show turned into a nightmare
In March 2016, 23 people of different ages and backgrounds volunteered to completely cut themselves off from the outside world. Left in an isolated camp set among the wilds of the Ardnamurchan peninsula, they were challenged to build a home, survive off the land and, ultimately, to find out if a lasting community could be formed.
It was supposed to be the ultimate test of human nature – a chance to prove that human beings were capable of working together, and employing the most basic of tools not only to live, but to thrive. And, of course, they would be filmed doing it for a show called Eden: Paradise Lost
– launched with great fanfare as the pinnacle of survival reality TV. What really happened on that little stretch of pristine beach in the Highlands was somewhat less romantic. It’s only now, four months after the last remaining participants left the camp, that we are to find out the truth about what went so wrong in the wild and why it has been off air for seven months.
At first, it seemed like the perfect escape – beautiful surroundings, forests ripe with game to shoot (among the group was a deer stalker called Glen, who had a gun), a sea full of mackerel, endless space to grow a thriving kitchen garden. They were even given enough dry food to last them the first 100 days. How bad could it get? Anyone who watched the initial episodes, however, saw how quickly “paradise” descended into something altogether less heavenly.
With 47 cameras rigged up around the camp, the initial plan had been to show the development of the “community” throughout the year. But the producers never could have predicted the dramatic scenes that would play out – fist fights, tantrums, participants getting so drunk on home-brewed moonshine that they collapsed, and a regression back to medieval gender roles that led to more than half the women leaving. The first episodes were shown on Channel 4 last summer, and then Eden disappeared from our screens leaving the participants blissfully unaware that no one was watching them.
Ian Dunkley, commissioning editor for Eden, is adamant that it wasn’t pulled because of any controversy: “It was simply because we wanted to let things play out over the year to see how they would come to an end. The only reason we changed the scheduling was because we wanted to make a dramatic series, and the events that were unfolding didn’t fit into the original transmission pattern.”
Next week, what happened will be revealed across five nights. There is no doubt that, at times, the fall of Eden makes for “great telly”. It’s a kind of anti-love Island, where everyone is malnourished, a bit grubby, and people are only getting together to fill the time in between chopping wood. But it isn’t always comfortable viewing.
“I saw the darkness coming,” says Ali, a junior doctor who was so infuriated by the way men started to control the community that she left last summer. “I was really struggling in there. I didn’t think it was going to get any better. I saw quite a bleak future for the community.” Josie, who stayed until the end of the experiment, agrees: “When the majority of the women leave, you start to forget what it’s like to be in a balanced group of people.”
The cracks began to form early on, when opinions differed on how to ration the dried food they had been given, with some of the men deciding that it should be eked out to last for longer than the 100 days. As they grew weaker on the limited supplies, crucial tasks like building their winter shelter and fixing a boat for fishing took longer. And so, those members of the camp who had control over the rations began to wield a great deal of power.
The limited food rations were just the start. At the centre of the chaos was a disturbing male-female divide that ran through camp politics. Six months in, and more than half the women had left. In one scene, in the new episodes, the men discuss passing the women between them for sex, all the while – it seems – systematically making them do the “female” jobs like cleaning, while they get on with the business of running the camp.
“Us men need to do the manly jobs, and the women need to do the women jobs,” says one of the first voices you hear in the opening episode of the new series – that of 34-year-old plumber Titch, who seems to be the ringleader of those who are ruling the camp by the end. “At first, we tried to be fair – no sexism et cetera,” he says. “Everyone wants to be in charge, it’s just whether or not they can be.”
Katie, 31, a marine conservationist who managed to last until the end, says it was almost as if the men “lost their motivation for being kinder, more gentle, more thoughtful” once the women left. “They had no reason to behave themselves. It just became a locker room kind of atmosphere. It escalated and then, because no one said no, it got worse and worse.”
“It was all very tongue-in-cheek and jokey,” says Stephen, 27. “I think it got a bit caveman-like. We all regressed.” Jack, 32, a former officer in the Household Cavalry, says what went on in the camp wasn’t meant to upset anyone. He tells me: “Things were never said to be offensive or malicious. It was just a sort of coping mechanism. They were not treated badly. It’s just having people from different walks of life and different backgrounds – when they get put into a different environment with different people, what some people think is acceptable other people think is not.”
The experiment descended into worrying scenes that saw the remaining women became so malnourished that many of them found their periods stopped. All amid claims that a ruling group of Alpha males planned to starve out the weakest women so that the rest of them could survive the coming winter. Truly, if Cormac Mccarthy had thought of it, he would have written the story of Eden.
Speaking to me from the Middle East, where he is now doing some work for the Army before coming home to evaluate what to do next, Jack seems to be one of the few participants who feels positive about his experience, saying it changed him for the better.
“When I watch it, there will be things that I will be shocked about. I went to see Rachel [a fellow contestant and the resident gardener] in Scotland a few weeks ago. She told me something I had said in the first few weeks. We were talking about possible relationships, and I said something along the lines of: ‘Well, there might be sex, but it might not be emotional – it’ll be more about the physical.’ I said, there’s no way I would have said that. And she replied: ‘You did, Jack.’ I was shocked. I can see why I might have said it, but
Eden has changed me massively.” He is adamant that he would do it all again, explaining that the simple life is the way to find happiness. You wonder if the women would agree.
Eden: Paradise Lost is on Channel 4 from Monday to Friday at 10pm from August 7
‘It started tongue-incheek but then got a bit caveman-like. We all regressed’