If I told you that during the first episode of Alone, Channel 4’s latest reality show, a member of the great British public is eaten by a bear, another savaged by a pack of wolves and a third suffers the loss of toes and fingers from the extreme cold, then you might well want to tune in, if only for all the wrong kinds of macabre reasons. But of course, none of that happens, and indeed nothing much else untoward befalls the 11 contestants dumped in Canada’s northern wilderness to fend for themselves. Nor, one strongly suspects, will Channel 4’s large team of risk assessors (they’re given their extensive due in the closing credits) allow any such reputational harm to befall the station, having itself recently narrowly escaped the privatising predations of Nadine Dorries (herself now sadly on the brink of political extinction).
Alone is very dull, then, as boring as unkind people say Canada is. As scary goes, and despite the portentous music and Blair Witch Project vibes, it’s about as suspenseful as a Duke of Edinburgh assignment in the Lake District. The idea is that a mixed bag of “ordinary” people (ie the Z-list cast of tomorrow’s panel and reality shows) are split up and each left to build a shelter, find food and generally endure the loneliness and low-level dangers. The one who sticks it out the longest wins the most fleeting encounter with fame.
