Oblivious reality contestants lived in wilderness for a year despite show's cancellation

If you agree to go on reality TV show where you are living in the wilderness and are participating in an experiment, you would hope that someone back home is at least watching.

If you’ve had a less than brilliant experience for months, it is only fair to want to vent to people who know exactly what you went through when you go home.

Well, some reality TV contestants were likely left a little more than flustered after their show was taken off air.

Back in 2016, a British reality TV show had the idea of sending 23 men and women into a remote corner of the Scottish Highlands for entertainment.

The group were expected to live in the wilderness for a year, completely cut off from contact from the outside world(Channel 4)

The Channel 4 program, called Eden, sent the group out to the wilderness expecting them to form a community, decide their own rules and laws, shelter and grow their own food.

The group were expected to do this for a year, completely cut off from contact from the outside world, with personal cameras and fixed rigs there to show what was going on in the community.

However, when the show was taken off air - the contestants bizarrely weren't told and just continued living in out in the wild.

“The appeal of Eden is that it was a real experiment, and when filming began we had no idea what the results would be and how those taking part would react to being isolated for months in a remote part of the British Isles,” the channel said in a statement ahead of the release of the show.

“That’s why we did it, and the story of their time, including the highs and the lows, will be shown later this year.”

When contestants returned to the modern world, not only did they realize no one was watching.(Channel 4)

And there were definitely a lot of lows with 13 of the 23 contestants quitting the show with reports of sexual jealousy, infighting, bullying and hunger taking its toll. Jheeze definitely sounds like a tough time.

When contestants returned to the modern world, not only did they realize no one was watching, they saw how their had been major changes in the world. Most notably in the UK the country had voted for Brexit and across the pond Donald Trump had become president, two major events many were surprised by.

In an even odd turn of events, while show only aired 3 months of the community, a spin off show a year later looked at the rest of the footage.

The show, Eden: Paradise Lost took viewers back to the community and showed just how things played out.

Topics: Film and TV, UK News

Gerrard Kaonga

Gerrard is a Journalist at UNILAD and has dived headfirst into covering everything from breaking global stories to trending entertainment news. He has a bachelors in English Literature from Brunel University and has written across a number of different national and international publications. Most notably the Financial Times, Daily Express, Evening Standard and Newsweek.