I’ve been noticing that Discovery channel has begun having to amp up it’s survival shows. So back in the day you had Bear Grylls or Survivor man who would go out theoretically alone and show you survival techniques in some desolate hole … like Watford.
Now it seems this isn;t enough there needs to be some drama some tension there beyond the fact that they’ve dumped a bloke from a helicopter in the jungle with only his wits some basic gear and a nearby 5* hilton and camera crew. It seems that format isn’t enough for people anymore they need more and Discovery et al are starting to dish out the goods.
The first I saw of this trend was Dual survival which has the genius idea of paring a ex army sniper all american bad arse Dave Canterbury with a “all natural” hippy survivalist Cody Lundin who tries to work by adapting to nature around him he also only wears shorts and refuses to wear shoes no mater what conditions he’s in. Though he did put on some socks, just socks mind, in the snow.
The show obviously plays up the clash of cultures as much as possible even though it seems to me that as the series is progressing there is a more easy respect between the two. Both are obviously (at least as far as an untrained person watching from the comfort of an armchair can discern)  very skilled survivalists and know a lot about surviving extreme conditions. They are also not the stereotype that has been painted of them beyond the first glance. Still the advertisers go out of their way to pick out the conflict in all the trailers because I guess that’s what people want even if most of the episodes show the two of them working together to survive.
Next in this trend seems to be Man Woman Wild which I’ve only seen trailers for thus far. The premise is a survival expert is dumped in the jungle somewhere (so far so normal) but with him is his wife who by implication has no survival training. Seems like a situation ripe for drama which I guess is the makers point.
I can only imagine the next step is a stock of big brother or some other reality show contestants dumped in the middle of nowhere having to survive. If we’re lucky it’ll turn into a live action version of lord of the flies.
It seems more of the trend of discovery attempting to over amp things like Mega volcano or Super Tsunami or the Perfect Pork Storm to reference a previous blog.
