Lessons Channel 4’s Eden can learn from Ben Fogle and Castaway 2000
As Channel 4 starts its new TV social experiment – marooning 23 strangers in remote Scotland for a year – Ben Dowell remembers BBC series Castaway 2000 and the problems it faced
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Keep them there
The castaways also had their own underhand ways of gauging the public mood. Not only were many of them allowed to return home for family illnesses or funerals over the course of the year, some made a bolt for it and got home. One high profile escapee’s bid for freedom became the subject of a massive press circus – including a speedboat chase – subjecting the show to ridicule.
Keep the press out
Word of a big-budget BBC production going disastrously wrong somewhere off the West Coast of Scotland had begun filtering through to the offices of the national newspapers. Scores of journalists were streaming towards Taransay by car, boat and plane. Suspicious looking characters were seen approaching the coast in small boats, and mainlanders on nearby Harris found themselves being stopped on the street and questioned by journalists about what was going on on the island. Headlines began appearing like “Castaways adrift over flu” and “Castaflops” even before the show aired. Channel 4 has kept a tight lockdown on security for Eden – in fact it won’t even show previews of the show – so it appears to have learned this lesson at least.
Don’t make the whole experience too grim – for viewers or those taking part
There was never any thought of taking the Castaway 2000 lot to a desert island, although, in time, tropical locations were to become standard for later reality shows like ITV’s Survivor, Love Island and I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here – all of which had the advantage of showing participants in bikinis and shorts, and giving the production staff the chance to spend time in an exotic location. Castaway 2000 was to be about Britain and the British, and Lion felt it was important to have their volunteers exposed to all that the British weather could throw at them. This didn’t go down well and made for fairly bleak TV. Taransay, just off the west coast of Harris, is made up of just under six square miles of windswept beach and moorland, and promised to test the volunteers to the limit. It had been uninhabited since the turn of the C20th and was used as rough grazing for sheep and deer, and between September and May is regularly battered by 100 mph winds. On Harris, the islanders say that the seals on Taransay don’t bark – they cough. And this was a problem.
Get everything set up in advance
The accommodation set up was a disaster and made the castaways really hate the producers. Locals on Harris were amazed by Lion’s decision to start building the temporary wooden eco-friendly living pods in November. As winter deepened, atrocious weather saw the building work on what would be the shelter for most of the castaways quickly fall behind schedule, and Lion were forced to beef up the local building team. Winds were so fierce that a hammer was blown into the face of a local builder, almost knocking him out. This led to another problem…
Be careful of rebellion
Partly because of the harsh conditions Lion was the subject of many rebellions from the islanders, one of whom incinerated a straw lion in a stone circle ceremony to display his anger at the way he felt treated. Castaway had one high profile departure after another. But some refused to take part at all. Artist Warren Latore, his partner Monica Cooney Liz and her husband Dez had almost completely refused to co-operate with the filming process. By the end the whole community felt it was divided between those who took part in the programme and those who didn’t. The refuseniks, unofficially led by the Dez, called themselves the Taransay Five and even fashioned their own flag which they flew from their pod. Those who did co-operate – including Ben Fogle – were known as the “telly tarts” by the refuseniks. The others, the implication went, were true castaways.
Eden begins tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm
