TV Shows We Love: Alone

One squirrel has the caloric equivalent of two pizza slices. Fish-head soup is better with lingonberries. The semi-digested contents of a rabbit’s entrails are nutritious and delicious.

Fun facts like these are abundant in the TV show Alone, which follows 10 contestants as they attempt to survive for as long as possible in the Canadian Arctic.

Many a naysayer will criticize survival TV for the fact that no one actually survives, at least not with any stakes, given that the camera crew is never more than a few feet away. But Alone – available on Netflix – is different. That’s why the show is called Alone – because the biggest selling point is that the contestants are truly, entirely alone. All recording is done on a personal camera. Late at night and early in the morning, contestants talk to the camera, their mute and faceless companion.

Boredom is the apex predator. Boredom makes people go crazy. Sooner or later, the long hours in a cramped shelter, the lack of human interaction, and the distance from family and friends, puts one’s mind in the mood to race. Many contestants – more than you’d think – tap out because they can’t stand being separated from their families. 

The contestants who win are gritty, knowledgeable, and absolutely frightening. The kind of people who slurp down fish eyes with the same glee a child does a gumdrop. One contestant killed a muskox with a pocket knife, and then saved the grassy chyme in its bowels for a rainy-day snack. He won $500,000.

All this madness is foreign to a 19-year-old girl who has exclusively lived in cities, but it’s a madness that makes for good TV. The survival life has a universal intrigue, a crude cachet. In this respect Alone is outstanding. Little can match the simple drama of surviving alone.