Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of the
Speaker 1: Front Unclaire Harvey. Reality TV is a phenomenon that can
Speaker 1: be traced back to the late nineteen forties, as the
Speaker 1: genre evolved from the award winning Up Series to the
Speaker 1: Jersey Shore via Sylvania Waters and Fuck Boy Island. The
Speaker 1: constants have been real people, real lives. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Alone premiered on the History Channel in the United States.
Speaker 1: If reality TV up to this point had been a
Speaker 1: social experiment, Alone was a solitary experiment where time slowed
Speaker 1: down and contestants had to rely on ten items and
Speaker 1: bush savvy to do one thing survive in the wild. Alone.
Speaker 1: Now it's a top rating staple of Australian TV today.
Speaker 1: Why Alone speaks to our primal instincts and why it's
Speaker 1: on SBS. Since that first season in twenty fifteen, Alone
Speaker 1: has become an international hit, with seasons now filming in
Speaker 1: nine countries, including here Alone Australia now just having wrapped
Speaker 1: its third season. Whether in British Columbia, Norway or the
Speaker 1: rugged West Coast of Tasmania, the format is the same.
Speaker 1: Ten contestants are dropped in separate remote locations with ten
Speaker 1: personal items.
Speaker 2: The acts PHARAOHAHD, two court, pot, belt, npe, heap.
Speaker 1: And a case of cameras to self document every high
Speaker 1: and low. Gradually, the Wild whittles down the field of contestants. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to tap but I don't want to
Speaker 1: die either, for the isolation proves too much for many.
Speaker 1: I do need people. I just didn't realize that I
Speaker 1: needed people. Frostbite, starvation and injury force contestants to tap out.
Speaker 1: Make a call using a satellite phone to be extracted. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's Tamaka.
Speaker 2: I'm officially tapping out.
Speaker 1: It's a game of survival and the last person standing
Speaker 1: gets a hefty prize, a cool quarter of a million dollars.
Speaker 1: Here in Australia. In today's episode, we speak to our
Speaker 1: media editor James Madden about this TV phenomenon. I'm also
Speaker 1: joined by the fronts Jasper League, who happens to be
Speaker 1: an Alone super fan. Jasper, I'm new to a Lone
Speaker 1: Australia and I've binged it, but you're a superfan. Tell
Speaker 1: me about season three Alone Australia. Who was your favorite character.
Speaker 3: I'd say it was a dead heat between Kaylee and
Speaker 3: mother Kaylee was so industrious, she was so likable. I'm
Speaker 3: not ashamed to admit that I cried when Kaylee was
Speaker 3: eliminated because she got a uti. Kaylee's story is amazing.
Speaker 3: She's a disability advocate. She's hearing impaired herself, she has
Speaker 3: been since birth. And she talked a lot about the
Speaker 3: fact that her father told her never to let her
Speaker 3: impairment be a crutch, and you never got the sense
Speaker 3: that that was outside of a bit of fear at
Speaker 3: the very beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a moving moment where there was a
Speaker 1: big storm raging outside her shelter and she turned off
Speaker 1: her cochlear implant. Let me know, there's an animal out there,
Speaker 1: screech in a way turning it off, there's complete silence,
Speaker 1: care nothing.
Speaker 3: I thought there was such a great move on the
Speaker 3: editor's part two to just kill the sound in that moment.
Speaker 3: So we really got a sense of what it would
Speaker 3: be like to be in that environment and not be able.
Speaker 2: To hear anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell me about mother.
Speaker 3: Mazza's the oldest contestant that alone Australia's had. He's sixty
Speaker 3: three years old. He's got a foul mouth on him,
Speaker 3: he's got a lot of incredible turns of phrase.
Speaker 2: That's the first brown trap. Not big, but I do
Speaker 2: feel like I've been kissed on the deck by firing.
Speaker 3: I found myself just smiling every time he was on
Speaker 3: the screen, and I was sad to see him be
Speaker 3: medically extracted as well. In his case, he was pretty
Speaker 3: beaten up. His blood pressure was really low, so he
Speaker 3: was having these dizziness spells. He was starting to fall over.
Speaker 3: He had gout in his left ankle. From memory, but
Speaker 3: mentally he could have won.
Speaker 1: Mather is a retired kangaroo shooter, so a professional bushman really.
Speaker 1: He was one of the last two standing, along with
Speaker 1: a thirty year old called Shay, a New Zealander who
Speaker 1: works as a possum trapper. Two expert outdoorsmen, and they
Speaker 1: really both struggled, didn't they.
Speaker 3: They definitely did. Maybe the trait that they both shared
Speaker 3: was come hell or high water. They were never going
Speaker 3: to give up.
Speaker 1: In the finale, we saw Shay catch for the first
Speaker 1: time mammal. He caught a patty mellon, yes, and then
Speaker 1: he slaughtered it and ate every part of it, he said,
Speaker 1: to honor the animal. It was confronting watching that happen,
Speaker 1: wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, it's a big part of the show. I
Speaker 3: remember when I first started watching it six or seven
Speaker 3: years ago, I found the hunting components of the show
Speaker 3: really confronting, but it is a necessary part of the show.
Speaker 3: There is no survival without killing, and I think that
Speaker 3: it's a good reminder for people, especially I think the
Speaker 3: meat eaters of the world, to come to grips with
Speaker 3: the reality of that relationship that we have with food.
Speaker 1: James, thanks for joining us. Like all reality television shows,
Speaker 1: Below in Australia is a masterpiece of editing. They take
Speaker 1: thous hours of footage and condense them down to a
Speaker 1: narrative for each character and a narrative with in each episode.
Speaker 1: But one thing that the participants don't have as a gripe,
Speaker 1: which we've become used to from other reality TV shows
Speaker 1: like say Big Brother or The Bachelor, there's no villain edit.
Speaker 1: Nobody is complaining that they've been misrepresented in a loane.
Speaker 1: Does that mean it's more kind of virtuous as reality
Speaker 1: television than other forms of the genre that we've seen.
Speaker 4: I would say that I suppose it's stripped back to
Speaker 4: what reality TV was, possibly always meant to be insofar
Speaker 4: as being a fly on the wall. Look at people
Speaker 4: living there, quote real life, even though they're being placed
Speaker 4: in extraordinary circumstances. As the series goes on, you can
Speaker 4: obviously see in a way that the contestants almost forget
Speaker 4: that they're part of a television show and their real
Speaker 4: selves are and exposed and authentic.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety two, Sylvania Warters Deadboot on Australian screens,
Speaker 1: which was really one of the first reality television shows
Speaker 1: that I was aware of made here in Australia that
Speaker 1: was made as a co production by the ABC and
Speaker 1: the BBC, and it followed a kind of a nuva
Speaker 1: resh Sydney family through their domestic dramas.
Speaker 4: For God's sake, he can have a bloody birthday came,
Speaker 4: but he's just saying it. They're all going to bring
Speaker 4: friends and the gony Buddy a million people.
Speaker 1: We haven't got the room, of course, we haven't got
Speaker 1: the stupid How do you think reality TV has kind
Speaker 1: of evolved from there? Has it got any better?
Speaker 4: Well, it's really interesting the Sylvania Waters point you make.
Speaker 4: I think the strength of Sylvania Waters even at the time,
Speaker 4: was that there was no Polish to it. These were
Speaker 4: people who were unashamedly themselves and there was no attempt
Speaker 4: to make them more impressive, if I can use that term.
Speaker 4: It was just supposed to be. This is the way
Speaker 4: this family lived their lives. And what you've seen the
Speaker 4: past few decades is that reality TV has morphed into fakery.
Speaker 4: Really it's not reality at all. Shows like Big Brother,
Speaker 4: even honestly Get Me out of Here, which is I
Speaker 4: supposed a similar concept. In a way, there's intervention from
Speaker 4: the producers which remove the truth of reality. So looking
Speaker 4: back to Savoni Waters and then looking where we are
Speaker 4: now with The Lone Australia, there are comparisons and in
Speaker 4: a way these shows are far more interesting and watchable
Speaker 4: given that the viewer knows that I suppose they're not
Speaker 4: being tricked.
Speaker 1: Of course, as the media editor of The Australian, you
Speaker 1: have to just look at all the media with an
Speaker 1: impartial eye. But do you have feelings about the other
Speaker 1: kinds of TV shows that we see, the more contrived
Speaker 1: ones that might be a talent quest like The Voice
Speaker 1: or Married at First Sight, where there's an immense amount
Speaker 1: of conflict introduced to a group of people. Does that
Speaker 1: make you despair about television, doesn't.
Speaker 4: Make me despair. My personal view is that most of
Speaker 4: these shows are harmless and good fun. The other thing
Speaker 4: I'd say is, of course, in terms of content on
Speaker 4: Australian television, particularly free to wear television, now, unscripted drama
Speaker 4: is what they call reality TV shows, that genre has
Speaker 4: completely overwhelmed scripted drama, and I don't think that is
Speaker 4: a particularly good thing.
Speaker 1: More of my chat with James Madden and Jasper Leiku
Speaker 1: after the.
Speaker 2: Break ah part of the funny talk about it.
Speaker 1: I really felt an affinity with the contestants who tapped
Speaker 1: out early.
Speaker 2: Physically, I've got a lot more in me.
Speaker 4: I've got a lot more in me physically, Emotionally, I
Speaker 4: can't that one of.
Speaker 2: You cry on every day.
Speaker 1: I appreciated the different kind of courage they showed in
Speaker 1: admitting to themselves that they weren't coping. What is it
Speaker 1: about the people who prosper and who.
Speaker 3: Win the winners Their family becomes this sort of deep
Speaker 3: source of strength for them to actually stay, as opposed
Speaker 3: to a sense of yearning that makes them want.
Speaker 2: To tap out.
Speaker 3: These are the people who have deep fortitude and self reliance. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: self Reliance, written by Ralph wado Emerson, was quoted by
Speaker 3: Allen in season one. The winners all seem to cross
Speaker 3: this threshold where they seem to tap into some other
Speaker 3: gear and they actually begin to thrive in these incredibly
Speaker 3: hostile environments. Solitude does this really interesting thing to them mentally,
Speaker 3: they become more philosophical, they become so thoughtful. Maybe at
Speaker 3: its core alone is about meaning or finding meaning.
Speaker 1: What's in it for a broadcaster like SBS to make
Speaker 1: this show.
Speaker 4: I think a couple of points. It's showcasing one of
Speaker 4: the most remote and beautiful parts of Australia, a part
Speaker 4: of Australia that most Australians a will never go to
Speaker 4: be have never seen on the screen. And it's featuring
Speaker 4: Australians and New Zealanders participating in something that ordinary Australians
Speaker 4: will never be exposed to or never experienced, in a
Speaker 4: way that commercial reality shows can't do. I don't think
Speaker 4: there's any issue with a broadcaster like SBS going above
Speaker 4: and beyond and stretching the boundaries of their charter to
Speaker 4: make a show such as A Lone Australia, which is
Speaker 4: perhaps outside their normal realm.
Speaker 1: James Madden is the Media editor of The Australian and
Speaker 1: his Unmissible section is in print every Monday and online
Speaker 1: all the time at the Australian dot com dot a you.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Front was hosted by me Claire
Speaker 1: Harvey and co produced with Jasper Leek, who edited the
Speaker 1: episode and also wrote our theme. Thanks for joining us
Speaker 1: on the Front this week. Our team also includes Kristin Amiot,
Speaker 1: leat Zamaglue, Tiffany Dimac, Josh Burton and Stephanie Coombs.