For a long time Katie Tunn couldn’t talk about Eden without feeling sick. “It was almost a PTSD thing,” the 38-year-old says of the results of appearing on what’s come to be regarded as one of the most disastrous British reality shows ever made.
Filmed in 2016, the social experiment followed 23 strangers as they tried to spend a year cut off from society, living self-sufficiently on the rugged west coast of Scotland. Originally programmed to air in real time, and shot by the cast members themselves, low ratings and public set invasions had forced producers to take it off air. (“We were getting viewers kayaking to the shore, bringing beer and chocolate,” says Tunn.) When it finally returned to screens as five-part series Eden: Paradise Lost in 2017, it was clear that what might have started as a cosy programme about building a community from scratch had taken a sinister turn. “It was just a completely different experience in the second six months compared to the first six months,” says Tunn. “It got very dark.”
