Alone Australia is an SBS success story, a survival reality series that pushes the participants to the limit and keeps viewers coming back to see who can tough it out the longest. After three seasons spent struggling to survive in the wilds of Australasia, this year’s outing comes with a twist: this time it’s set in the Northern hemisphere – Sapmi, Finland, to be exact.
While this isn’t the first time Alone Australia has filmed outside Australia – the second season took place in Fiordland, New Zealand – there’s a big difference between travelling across the ditch and heading to the other side of the globe. Is this another aspect of the growing struggle Australian television faces when trying to create something of our own?
Well, probably not. For starters, it’s not like Alone Australia is a big local employer. While there’s a support team, the cast members film their own adventures as they try to find food and shelter in the wilderness for weeks on end. And all the production side of things remains here with SBS.
It’s not a local format either. Alone was originally created in the US, and various versions have been filmed across the globe. But still, what does it say when we can’t film a reality survival series on a continent filled with dangerous wildlife and extreme weather?
Alone Australia – quick links
Finding the right location
To be fair, it needs to be a certain kind of dangerous. The baking heat that’s synonymous with the outback isn’t great: people need to battle against elements they can survive and take measures against, not merely get roasted to death. Venomous rainforest creepy-crawlies are also bad: you need an environment where you can see the threats coming, not where you’ll have to airlift contestants out in a hurry if they sit in the wrong spot.
Alone Australia isn’t just a show about surviving in a physical sense: it’s also about how the battle to survive on your own takes an emotional toll. Cold and wet is debilitating and depressing in a way that the desert – or the rainforest – simply isn’t.
And while overseas versions of the show have tried other locations (a recent season was filmed in Africa, for example) Alone is an endurance challenge first and foremost. It doesn’t really work as a show if the participants can lounge around all day in the sun then grab a bunch of berries off the nearest bush for dinner.
In Australia, the demands of the series have narrowed things down to pretty much the one location where the two locally-shot seasons took place: the wilds of Tasmania. The thing is, if you’re dropped off in what is basically your own backyard, you have a good idea of how to get by, even if food is scarce.
If you’re dropped off on the other side of the world, the challenges are a little different.
So while the contestants this year were told they’d be heading north, exactly where was kept a secret until roughly a week beforehand: the contestants are dropped into somewhere cold and wet and a little grim, just not the kind of grim they might have been expecting.
Watch the trailer
Moving to Finland
It was definitely a plus in the Tasmanian seasons to get a look at a part of our country that many of us would otherwise never see. But Alone Australia (and Alone in general) is not really about the locations. So long as they’re a challenge, they tend to fade into the background. Unless it turns out the nearby lake is full of dead trees that make fishing pretty much impossible, as happened in the first season.
Previous contestants on Alone Australia rarely interacted with the wildlife, because most of it was protected species (fishing yes, hunting no). That remains a problem this season, as while there are tasty reindeer around, they belong to the local Sami people and killing them is off the (dinner) table. Sometimes a survivalist just can’t catch a break.
And yes, Australia is notorious for its deadly wildlife. But it’s almost entirely snakes and spiders, which aren’t exactly concentrated in northern Tasmania. The northern hemisphere features slightly larger threats, such as wolves and bears – which have made an appearance in other editions of the franchise, so keep your eyes peeled this season.
So this year Alone Australia might not be taking place in Australia. But it does feature 10 Australians trying to survive in a very inhospitable corner of the globe. Sure, it might be nice to watch them freezing and starving underneath the Southern Cross. But increasingly desperate monologues to camera after failing to get a fire started in sub-zero temperatures? That kind of thing is television gold no matter where they take place.
