I'm a huge sucker for survival shows, especially the "marooned on a desert island" subgenre. While Bear Grylls' "The Island" and Channel 4's "Eden" explored the dynamics of a group striving to build a community with limited tools, "Naked and Marooned" pushes the concept to its extreme by stranding ex-British army officer and adventurer Ed Stafford on a deserted Fijian island for 60 days, with nothing but a camera and an emergency med kit and satellite phone. That's right, no clothes, no knife, not even any water.
While help is obviously nearby in the event of accident or illness, one quickly realises how the total isolation represents an equally daunting challenge. Humans are social creatures, and the sheer loneliness, compounded by sweltering heat, dehydration and hunger, simply maintaining a level head and avoiding anxiety and paranoia is no mean feat.
The show proceeds as you might expect, with Stafford striving each day to find and consume just enough water and food to survive, while relying on ingenuity, luck and painstaking hard work to improve his standard of living from caveman to hunter gatherer. And while this arduous process is fascinating to watch, despite the little footage Stafford is able to capture, a couple of red flags do start to pop up that call into question the show's authenticity.
For one, the fact that there just happens to be a small flock of goats on this minuscule rock in the pacific ocean is questionable at best. Likewise that there are these pristinely planted tuber plants. While I understand it would be unreasonable and dangerous to maroon Stafford on an island without enough food to survive, the lack of transparency on this issue irks me. "The Island with Bear Grylls" was honest about ensuring food sources on the island, and I resent the producers of this show not doing the same. Finally, the fact that Stafford is unable to catch a goat himself, but then one magically gets trapped in some brambles just metres from his camp, again seems dubious.
These questions aside, the show succeeds in its main goal: demonstrating just how difficult real survival is when you're alone with no tools. It certainly made me question my own survival ability seeing this highly experienced, physical adonis spend days hacking away at a slender tree with a clam shell in order to build his shelter. From a purely entertaining standpoint, however, I certainly missed the group tensions and conversations of other shows.
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