Fight to Survive

I wanted to like this. It has all the ingredients for a programme that should...should be an enjoyable watch. It has familiar people we've all seen before if you watch Survivor type shows. People who know how to use tactics, people who don't mind going without to get to a win. People who are willing to compete with each other. People from 'Survivor', 'Alone', Naked and afraid'..you get the picture. Theoretically they know what they're doing and they also know how to react to camera and be interesting. And yet it's not a good watch.

It's not about surviving, it's about fighting. It's appealing to something rather unpleasant in human nature and rewarding it.

Consequently any given episode revolves around people moaning and being genuinely uncomfortable and these are people used to survival situations. Plotting to make life as horrific as they possibly can for the others is the way to go. In other words for me it's nasty.

It goes against many of the principles of the shows a lot of them have been in before. Seems that survival principles are for sale.

What's bothering me is this trend towards who can inflict the most discomfort on the rest seems to be the way this type of show is going. Who behaves the worst and the cruelest is the featured contestant and might well win. Where is this going ?

As unlikely as that seems consider...the closing hook on an episode is that someone says forcefully they are going to make people fight for water. Really ? Water ?

Chances are this won't actually happen but it's the selling point for next week.

If you enjoy this kind of thing go for it. Not for me.

To me it's appealing to an aspect of humanity that is a concern.