The Colony

I was intrigued by the premise of this show, but quickly became turned off by how contrived it is.

I'm willing to suspend disbelief and accept that everyone in the group (or nearly everyone, since the marine biologist is pretty much useless) is highly skilled and trained in a field that is tailor-made for the situation. I guess in the post apocalypse no run-of-the-mill folks manage to survive and come together.

That being said, the ideas that the Colonists come up with each week strain credibility pretty far. I could buy it if every once in a while someone had an unusual solution to a problem, but when week-in, week-out they come up with elaborate solutions, I call foul. It all seems very contrived and likely fed to the Colonists by producers.

The second major problem is the appearance of needed materials. The Colonists apparently picked the greatest abandoned warehouse in the world to inhabitant. The warehouse miraculously produces whatever is needed to finish a project. Again just a little too contrived for me. The Colonists were never faced with abandoning a plan or doing something more simply because whatever they needed was magically found in the warehouse.

I'm guilty of watching the entire series. Once I watched a couple episodes, I felt I needed to finish it out. But, the last several episodes, my eyes were rolling quite a bit.

OK, so I'm just going to make this short: The premise is that it's essentially a live action role play scenario.

That said, I think that what most of the reviews have missed so far is that the whole point of this show is to demonstrate a series of actual tasks that *might* have to be accomplished by survivors of an apocalyptic scenario. Yes, some of their successes are a bit far fetched, but to be real, that doesn't make for an entirely compelling narrative. We're not talking about Survivor, we're not talking about realism here. What we're experiencing is a social experiment of a variety.

The first season was more believably populated by people who I would trust in a survival situation, definitely. The second season is markedly less about actually skilled members of the team/colony and more about the psychological make up of a surviving group. Both seasons are compelling because they address many of the questions inherent to survival/post-apocalyptic films and fiction. Would a ragtag group be able to pull it together enough to make it through day-to-day? Would they be able to use enough common sense and basic knowledge to complete complicated and confusing tasks? Could they, ultimately, rely on one another for survival?

Would it be interesting to have it crewed/cast entirely by people who would be useful in a survival scenario: of course. Would it be likely or even realistic for that to be the case: Of course not.

As for staged scenarios, I really can't argue much on that, except to say it makes sense to have tasks be staged as well as to have the raiders and non-colony members be actors and have their reactions staged. That's part of the whole experiment, to demonstrate what's actually going to happen to social reasoning and our understanding of cultural imperatives.

I guess, to once again sum up, I'd say this: If you're looking for something that is compelling and true to life, set up your own colony with your own friends and see how it goes. If you want to see something that's as informative as entertaining, just watch the show and understand you're not watching Survivorman, you're not even watching Man vs. Wild.

I enjoyed this series a lot! It was like watching a movie such as "The Road" or "Book of Eli" without the rest of the BS, just lets see how things REALLY went day to day and how creative people can or can't be when faced with hard situations. I so enjoyed feeling a part of this journey, privileged to watch and learn from the trials the cast went through. Every item built to help them on their journey was amazing and I only hope if I was faced with the same issues I could help even half as much. I recommend this series to anyone who is interested in surviving a post apocalyptic world, there are many things and points made that might just make the difference in your living or dying, pay attention! ;)

I found the first season very enjoyable. It was like a survival-themed Scrapheap Challenge - an intelligent/skilled team, engineering the solutions to problems with somewhat limited resources.

Yes, it was a very silly that they conveniently found everything they needed, and their builds worked first-time most of the time, but still, it was enjoyable viewing.

The role-play elements were a bit rubbish, 'fighting off' bad guys - but not too distracting.

Sadly, with S2, it degenerated into fairly trashy reality TV, less engineering/building, a less likable/less intelligent group of survivors, and far more shouting, bickering, and far more bad role-playing.

I love this show - finally quality TV worth watching! I always learn so much watching and I love how each episode has different solutions to the same basic needs. I wish there were tons more to watch. Why doesn't anyone I ever tell about this show know it exists?! This should be on TV especially with all that is going on in this country and how many p r e p p e r s we have who would also love and appreciate this show.

I don't know why I need to write 10 lines of text. I said everything I needed to say already.

I love this show - finally quality TV worth watching! I always learn so much watching and I love how each episode has different solutions to the same basic needs. I wish there were tons more to watch. Why doesn't anyone I ever tell about this show know it exists?! This should be on TV especially with all that is going on in this country and how many p r e p p e r s we have who would also love and appreciate this show.