Bear Grylls' The Island C4. Er, is it me or..?

[Vivacia]

Generations have wondered if they could survive being stranded on a desert island. But how would people cope if they had to do it, for real, and with only themselves to rely on?
Adventurer Bear Grylls abandons 13 Britons on a remote, uninhabited Pacific island for a month. They will be completely alone, filming themselves, and with only the clothes they're wearing and some basic tools.
The island may look like paradise but behind the beaches it can be hell on earth.
When stripped of all the luxuries and conveniences of 21st-century living, does the modern Brit still have the spirit and resources to survive?

Sounds reasonable, only when I look at the photos of the contestants there's something I can't quite put my finger on.

Researching it a bit more, I found interviews were Grylls talks about wanting the programme to be an exploration of masculinity and what it means to be a man in Britain today. Sounds good, so shouldn't that be a bit mentioned a bit more prominently, a major part of the show's premise? Otherwise, it looks like an afterthought, a quickly thought up excuse.

What would you like to put your finger on?

Have you got a link to the picture? I'm guessing it's 'men only'.

I think they've already felt the backlash and hastily decided to replace the word 'man' with 'Brit' and hope that nobody notices that there are no women there.

The advert i heard a couple of days ago said "British men" not just "Brits".

Can't stand Bear Grylls anyway .

Yep, the advert I saw definitely mentioned they were men, and what the programme was about.

So when is it valid or allowed to look at the interactions of single-sex groups? As another example my daughter watches Britain's Next Top Model, and there are countless variant from other nations on the same theme. All participants (that I have seen) are female. Is it wrong?

OP is saying that if it it being about men then fine but as a part of the program that should be mentioned.

As if they put it as she saw on the ad - the challenge get a group of average brits and see if they can survive - and there are no women there - then that kind of wipes women out of the picture as being ordinary people - which is what has gone on forever and what a lot of people were hoping was starting to change. ie women being seen as people just like men.

The television trailer makes it clear it's men only. And removing sex makes it nearer to Lord of the Files.

There have been other programmes which have had mixed groups, such as Castaway and that one from ages ago about recreating an Iron Age (?) settlement.

Didn't Joanna Lumley do one of these island-castaway programmes a few years ago, with no men involved? The concept is nothing new.

I'm not arguing about having a programme about just men. Or just women. That has never been my point.

No, I think your point is about the interchangeability of the word 'Briton' and the word 'man'.

The programme sounds like hell; why do they need Adventurer (is that a job now?) Bear if all he's doing is abandoning them on the island?! It also sounds dangerous and exploitative. How can it explore what it means to be a man in Britain today when they are patently not in Britain? (Unless we have some desert islands I was unaware of?)

I tell you what I don't like about the concept of that program: "abandoned on a Pacific Island" - not really. There is crew and they will have emergency get-outs (quite rightly), but it is NOT the same as actually being left to you own devices in some kind of hostile environment. Without training etc.
I hate this kind of stuff

Well then - to me it seems as though your second post answered your query in the first. You aren't happy about the prominence of the reason given for a male-only cast, but it was not omitted. So really, it's a bit subjective, isn't it? 'They could have emphasised it more' is not the same as 'they didn't mention it.'

No Jeebus I don't have a problem with the male-only participants. I have a problem with the exclusion of women.

If it's an investigation in to what it means to be masculine in today's society, accepting that they probably mean male, than say so. Don't send out the message that a group of survivalists are, by default, only men.

I'm not sure where they are going with this show but if you like survivalist programs then you might want to watch Naked and Afraid. 1 man 1 Woman both survival experts are placed in harsh environments, they can bring only 1 item each and have to last for 21 days before they head to the extraction zone. It can be tough and what they go through is extremely difficult.

I'mbreally looking forward to it personally.

I think a same sex group makes for the best viewing tbh, because its human pitted up against nature rather than about relationships between the genders.

I think they should be loud and proud about the fact it's an all male group.

I'm hoping a female survival expert will lead a similar venture with wimmin in the future.

I too will give it a go. As the blurb says, haven't most of us wondered how we would manage? ("Us" as in people).

In the event of WW3 or some hideous natural disaster in which the survival of the human race would depend on such techniques, they'd bloody have to include women or the human race would only survive for one generation tops. How do they think we managed in the days when bare survival was the only option? We're still here, so women must have been able to hack it too.

Where exactly was the piece you quoted in OP published?

The broadcast trailer definitely refers to 'British men' and 'men' (I've seen it again this afternoon, and listened carefully).

And was the quotation sourced directly to the programme makers, or should we assume a lazy writer/subbie at the publication?

I don't think that they are suggesting women can't hack it. I wondered if they didn't want any sexual "distractions" to the programme... perhaps they only considered heterosexual men?

Perhaps Grylls is just a bit "Boys Own" and doesn't like working with women.

Gryll's doesn't seem to have any issues with us, he did Bear's Wild Weekend a few years back survival with "Slebs" and I remember Miranda Hart with him. All the ads for it I saw mentioned it was all men, so prehaps there is an intention of doing a second one with just us. But judging by the type of guys they got in the human race is doomed in the case of a disaster.

It was interesting viewing, that's for sure

Probably no women allowed as they would put the men to shame.

I quite enjoyed it. I like stuff like this it reminds me of the early 2000's when reality shows were new and shiny and all the rage.
They did seem to suggest taht being a modern British man involved 3 blokes spending 8 hours starting a fire while the rest of them lay around in the sun complaining about the heat. Did none of them think to go and look for food and other water at the same time or was it just editing to make them look like numpties.
I can't be doing with Bear Grylls, give me Ray Mears anytime.