SBS’s Alone Australia, a survival documentary show where ten Aussies are dropped off in areas of the remote Tasmanian wilderness, has proved an unlikely success.
Since premiering on the 29th of March, audiences for episode one have surpassed the million mark and it has been named SBS’s highest-rating show of 2023.
For SBS’s director of TV, Kathryn Fink, the show’s success is because Alone Australia touches on the core instinct of human survival.
“I think the fact that it is an observational documentary that is really about human resilience, both physical and emotional resilience, is something that people really are connecting to,” she told B&T.
“I think a lot of people are sitting at home asking themselves, you know, what would I do? What are the ten things I’d take? How long would I survive? I think people are really connecting to that”.
Unlike a lot of heavily-edited reality-style shows, Alone Australia is unusually raw – the filming for the show is left in the hands of the contestants.
“The participants are shooting themselves. So it’s incredibly authentic. And as it gets tougher, you see the incredible resilience and strength, as well as the vulnerabilities come out, which also makes it incredibly engaging,” Fink says.
Whilst the contestants do get training before the show begins, once “they’re out there, they’re out there,” Fink says.
As you can imagine, surviving desolate areas of Tasmania and lugging up to 60kg of camera equipment around isn’t something everyone can do.
“There’s a casting call that goes out, but we do stipulate that we’re looking for people with a certain skill set. And, you know, we have to check that they are able to light a fire and, you know, construct a basic habitat before they go out there” Fink says.
As a champion of diversity, it was important to SBS that the cast of Alone Australia was representative as well as able to survive in the wild.
“You want people to reflect contemporary Australian, but you also need them to have those skill sets. So they actually last more than a week. That’s the trick”.
As the show was initially based on Alone (shot in America), I asked what makes this series distinctively Australian.
“You know, one of the protagonists of this show is actually the landscape. Western Tasmania which is absolutely stunning”.
“It was important to us to talk about the history and culture and be respectful to the traditional owners of the land”.
The season continues on Wednesday at 7:30pm on SBS and SBS on Demand
