Sunday-Tuesday, 9pm,
C4
We quite enjoyed Celebrity Bear Hunt on Netflix last year even though its numbers were evidently disappointing and we remember Capture on The CW around a decade ago which promoted itself as a Hunger Games-style competition show – this seems to have a very similar look and feel to that even if the format isn’t quite the same.
Ten people vie to win up to £100,000, initially split into predators and prey. The prey must complete tasks in the forest to earn prize money all the while being hunted down by the predators, Unfortunately that’s as far as I know how the format works but given there’s an ultimate winner there’s evidently an elimination aspect, and we understand there’s an element where the prey get to turn predator, whether that’s episodic or Pacman power pill style I don’t know.
This feels like the sort of thing that ought to for C4 quite well but I can’t say I’ve seen much buzz about it. Let us know what you think in the comments.
Speaking of new formats that sound familiar, it sounds like Channel 4 are bringing back Crisis Command too.
https://www.channel4.com/press/news/channel-4-commissions-bold-new-format-war-room-wt
Haven’t watched it yet, hoping to tonight, but just seen a 364k overnight figure for episode 1. Might be a long few weeks for C4.
All three of this week’s episodes are up on All 4 if that is your wont.
This is… not great!
A precis of how it works – 10 people go and live in a luxury pyramidal shaped building in the middle of the Bulgarian forest. To begin with half of them will become Predators, and the other half will become Prey. They will as a group decide who the first Predator is, that person will pick the next one, who will pick the next one and so on.
Before the hunt the Prey are shown the map and a rough location of where challenges can be found in The Hunt Arena (forest). Each challenge is worth different amounts of money (£2k, £5k and £10k) and they’re also told what the category of challenge will be (Luck, Visual Reasoning, skill etc). Each Prey begins with £1,000 loaded onto their armband.
Each Hunt begins and ends in… The Glade, an open bit of the forest where ten plinths stand, everybody will begin on a plinth. The Hunt begins and lasts sixty minutes, the Prey get a two-minute headstart. Their job is to escape capture and to try and complete challenges for money – ten minutes in their snazzy armband GPS things show them where the challenges are. The PRedators don’t get this information. If a Predator catches a Prey, they swap coloured shirts, the Predator steals that Prey’s money and they swap roles. At the end of a Hunt only Predators are up for elimination, and it’s the Prey who will do all the voting.
The Challenges at least look decently fun and mildly Crystal Maze-y, although we only saw one in episode one – roll a dice and try and roll three sixes, if you don’t roll a six you’ve got to cut a wire, some of which will set off a loud buzzer alerting people nearby. However if you don’t complete the task in six minutes, your location gets shown up on every body’s armbands.
The final ten minutes has everybody race back to The Glade, the Prey have to make it back to a podium to finish the Hunt. Of course, the run for home is precisely the point the Predators know where all the Prey is going, so unsurprisingly running for the podium is where most of the capturing happens, rendering the actual Hunt bit largely moot really.
Back at the house the surviving Prey have a conflab followed by an overwrought secret voting ceremony, followed by an even more overwrought elimination procedure where the Predators stand in a room whilst The Control Voice one-by-one announces the names of people who are safe. And then the episode ended before revealing who got eliminated.
Nothing worthwhile happens in the first twenty minutes, it’s all exposition and what we want is entertainment. The Hunt itself takes up barely 15 minutes of screentime because despite being central to what the show is about what everyone is really tuning in for is strategy chat, clearly. Ultimately it’s a very silly show (what if Hunted met… The Traitors?) that tries to hide it behind really quite po faced presentation, it tries to be a bit cold and Hunger Games-y but I just can’t buy into it. When someone gets caught it’s not thrilling or fun like on Hunted or Run For Money, what I’m mainly thinking is ‘oh’. This probably should have started in media res and jumped back and forth to explain its meta, as it is it’s not surprising the first episode rated as low as it did, it takes forever for the fun to start.
This has got to be one of the oddest commissions of recent years. There’s no purpose to it whatsoever, no ‘why’ and no question it’s answering. Normally that should be fine, like in The Traitors, but there’s something so hollow about this show without having any reasoning whatsoever as to why the game exists. Why are they in a forest? Why are they in a bunker? Why are the tasks random normal games in a forest? Just why generally? Such an empty show. The forest area is apparently huge but how would you know when every bush looks the same and you barely see any maps or anything. The drama between the contestants is present yet I can’t connect to it.
Really hard work to watch.
I don’t think that’s fair at all. I think it very much answers the question “what if they made Hunted boring?”
There’s not even much actual hunting going on so much as people just coming across things and people by happenstance until the end. At least Celebrity Bear Hunt tried to be a bit skilful.
Anyway, four stars in The Guardian. And Heat Magazine.
This looks like a show that should be on something like TLC. It all feels so budget.
I think all the challenges have been won with one second left, which suggests either *incredible* pitched design or we’re being lied to.
183k last night!!! There’s no way they’re keeping this on in that slot. Expect the 24 Hours in Police Custody repeats to be whipped out asap.
We should point out for balance and with a completely straight face that it’s been up on All 4 since Sunday so *might* have been watched a million times pre-broadcast, we just won’t find out for another fortnight.
Moved to 10pm from Monday in its second week.
The entire series is now up apparently if you can’t wait to see how it ends.
I’ve hate-watched my way through this. Not sure why but possibly mainly through intrigue because it’s so staggeringly terrible (and boring) and yet that 9 episode run suggests that they really though this was going to be their next big thing.
I’d say the series gets quite a bit worse as it goes along. The format is so fundamentally and obviously flawed that anyone even remotely good who has become a Predator is absolutely going to be eliminated. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say if you think someone is going to get voted out, then yes you’re right, they absolutely will.
Shelley keeps going on about wanting to prove that older women can do anything, but regretfully proves the exact opposite, reaching the finale essentially by default by surviving eight culls because she was so useless that the Prey were desperate to keep her in.
The ‘I’m just watching hide and seek’ element is really brought to life by the way whenever anyone gets captured they’re smiling like when you would when you’ve been captured in a game of tag by a colleague at a corporate away day. The fundamental game is just so lacklustre that no one’s taking it that seriously.
There’s a genuinely jaw-dropping bit of redubbed voiceover in (I think) episode 6 whilst the Prey discuss who to get rid of. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect from Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place, it was that poorly executed. It doesn’t even add anything to the storyline.
The finale does at least have an interesting twist on the old Split or Steal mechanic, though the winning reveal isn’t particularly euphoric. A fitting end I suppose.
The big question of course is how did this consolidate?
The episode that went out on Sunday 29th managed to get up to 455k.
The episode that went out on the 23rd consolidated to 356k, beneath Countdown.
No other episode made the C4 Thinkbox Top 50.
But! It’s a Channel 4 show, they’d assume it skews young. Were those viewers all young bucks worth a lot of money?
No.
Actually I should add for fairness that Thinkbox won’t include pre-broadcast, which most of the series was up for. Still, though.
This is coming back for a second series according to The Sun despite low ratings and being moved to a later slot. Applications are now open for new contestants to take part
https://shortaudition.com/The-Hunt-Prey-Vs-Predator
Officially cancelled by C4
https://www.tvzoneuk.com/post/thehunt-c4series-axedrep1
Curious to know which show will top the Hall of Shame this year – this or The Neighbourhood
What about Do You Know Your Place ? on BBC2, That’s definitely up there as one of the worst this year.
To be honest I had totally forgotten about that show. It seems we’ve got some proper stinkers this year
Thankfully some good options for HOF though. None that I would say are fantastic, but I don’t imagine they will be appearing high up in the HOS.