I think they should start by making their kids’ tea, but then I would, wouldn’t I? Which is why I am not the commissioner of programmes such as Into the Jungle With Ed Stafford.
The premise is simple. It is up to you to decide how stupid it is. The explorer and survivalist Ed Stafford (who has walked the walk rather than just talked the talk, having become, in 2010, the first person to walk the length of the Amazon) takes six men and their children into the jungle of Belize to see if a few weeks of toughing it out amid the mosquitoes, botflies, snakes and jaguars will bring them closer together. All feel disconnected from their children and vice versa, with the exception of Jethro and his son Dexter, who acknowledge that Jethro is having trouble contemplating the separation that must take place if his 12-year-old son is to thrive as he gets older.
It is the usual carefully curated collection. There are the calm pairings: Jethro and Dexter, plus 12-year-old Immie and her overprotective father, Christian, who steps in too early to help her with any difficulties presented by the fact that she was born without a left hand.
There are noisy ones, such as Jeff and his 12-year-old son Akai – “He thinks he knows everything! And so do I!” says Akai cheerfully – and the Chrises. Chris Sr thinks Chris Jr, 15, is part of the “snowflake, softer generation” that needs to learn “a few old-school skills”; his son smiles silently and slightly sadly.
There is the manchild Efdal and his 11-year-old daughter Ezra, who says she often feels older than her Lego-building father. “It’s technical Lego!” he protests. There is the posh pair, Ben and his 14-year-old son Roka, who is at boarding school. Ben says they are ships that pass in the night.
For the first challenge, the generations are separated. The dads must hike two hours up river then jump from a 7.6-metre (25ft) cliff to be reunited with their children. Jeff and Christian quickly take the lead – a testament in Jeff’s case, perhaps, to his rural Jamaican childhood, although we must note Akai’s commentary: “My dad thinks he is one with the Earth! But even if that is the truth, some things are exaggerated. He’s Uber Eats now.” Sometimes I really, really, love kids. Ben and Jethro bring up the rear, with Ben helping his compadre, who has a prosthetic leg, negotiate trickier parts of the trail.
The jump takes place in front of the children, which turns it into a test of shame, love and pride, rather than a wholesome opportunity for personal growth. It makes me want to stake out every manipulative member of the production team under the broiling sun and let the snakes have them, but you may regard it more robustly.
The feeling of manipulation encroaches more and more as time goes on. In the first episode, it mainly operates through Jethro. Stafford pulls him aside for a heart-to-heart after the jump. Jethro reveals that he was in care from the age of nine because his dad “left early” and his mother couldn’t take care of her children. Dexter – “the light of my life” – was born when Jethro was 20. He wants to show him the world, “but where does that leave me? … I need him.”
This wellspring of pain is awful to witness. The idea that Jethro and his son are best served by being stuck in a reality show, rather than in therapy, and are being used to tug viewers’ heartstrings is – well, I am back to staking out bodies.
Anyway. On we go. Abseiling together is next (night hikes, sailing in homemade dugout canoes and fending for themselves in the wilderness will follow). It is supposedly designed to forge bonds and expose dynamics – who will be supportive, who will berate their child, who will push their child, who will let them give up? – but it is really there to provide the traditional audience fodder. Who will be our heroes and our villains? Who will transform from one into the other? Who will be celebrated, who will be the grit in the oyster and who will we all love to hate? How much of it will be engineered by the editors?
I don’t normally care this much. But the children are so vulnerable – on the cusp between not enough and too much understanding of their fathers – that the discomfort cannot be ignored. Stafford’s intentions are clearly good. The people standing behind him in their realisation for the screen I am not so sure about.
• Into the Jungle With Ed Stafford is on Channel 4
