The unacknowledged subtitle of Channel 4’s new reality series Eden (Mondays) is Die, Hippies! Die! Obviously they’re not going to admit this because that wouldn’t be right. But I’m sure Channel 4 is hoping that a terrible Lord of the Flies-type scenario will unfold for the 23 victims who’ve volunteered to get back to nature on a remote Scottish peninsula for 12 months, in which they hunt one another down with sharpened sticks, with hideously watchable consequences.
In episode one, my money would have been on Anton as chap-best-placed-to-survive. Middle-aged, stroppy and northern, an adventurer by trade, Anton very quickly decided that he absolutely could not cope with the bunch of mostly twentysomething special snowflakes (yoga teacher; lifestyle coach; marine conservationist) with whom he’d have to spend the next year.
And who could blame him? There they all were, stranded in the wilderness, dependent for their survival on their wits, a few basic starter supplies (fishing kit, hunting rifle, sleeping bags, and so on) and their ability to make the most of their livestock (goats, pigs, sheep, chickens) and their various fruit and vegetable seedlings.
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