Alone

01 August 2022

As the boat pulls away, a figure is left standing alone on the rocky beach beneath a thick wall of fir trees. The person stares out after the boat relishing the last morsel of human contact they will have for an indefinite time. I’ve been watching Alone (available on SBS, Binge, Kanopy). And I’m a little late to the party, given it debuted in 2015 and is screening the final episodes of its ninth season.

For latecomers like myself, the premise is almost comically simple: ten contestants, all survival experts, are left with a limited set of tools and no food, alone in ten different pockets of wilderness on the perennially wet and foggy Vancouver Island. They have minimal gear, including a satellite phone and cameras to film themselves trying to survive. The last person to tap out wins half a million dollars.

It’s the show that Survivor should have been. No games, no voting, no nonsense. And none of the contestants have any clue what their competitors are doing. The physical challenges are many, the most obvious being predators, with numerous contestants tapping out after close calls with black bears. And that’s often after they’ve managed to build an appropriate shelter, find water, make fire and scrounge enough food.

But the real appeal of Alone is witnessing the mental journeys and touching revelations of character. Each person speaks to their camera candidly about their past, their aspirations, their inner struggles. As a season begins, some contestants seem flaky and insecure and yet demonstrate vast stores of resourcefulness and inner fortitude. Others, including bombastic, combat-hardened veterans, struggle with the mental demands and quickly crumble.

Those who go the distance demonstrate a strange mix of creativity, patience and a capacity for suffering. For some contestants, the experience quickly becomes a living nightmare. For others, a paradise. Regardless of the degree of difficulty, Alone puts each person through an existential meat grinder. What am I doing this for? What am I doing with my life?

'Who would I be, if left in a similar situation? Who would any of us be?'

And that’s where the show moves from cheap minimalist drama into a profound introspective meditation on life. Who are you when the rest is stripped away?

Because it’s not the threat of bears or the relentless wind or rain that gets to them, nor is it the cold or the starvation. It’s the isolation. For many, there’s an initial burst of joy in their newfound solitude, but

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Alone

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