‘Naked and Afraid’ is American raw reality TV at its best

There is nothing that brings me more joy than American trash TV. I’m not exaggerating when I say that some of the stuff the Yanks have produced in the past few years makes Love Island look like a tea party your Tory-voting grandmother would find too quaint.

Don’t believe me? Well, then try and get your head around Man vs Bear, the Discovery Channel programme that literally pits one foolish human competitor against a grizzly bear in various tests of brute strength. Or one of my personal favourites, 90 Day Fiancé, which follows groups of Americans and foreigners as they attempt to marry within three months of meeting to meet US visa requirements (yes, it features a lot of middle-aged white men wooing much younger brides from developing countries – but it also has some surprising twists.)

Then there’s The Masked Singer, an X Factor-style programme on Fox where the judges include Robin Thicke (he of “Blurred Lines” infamy) watch C-list celebrities perform behind elaborate costumes including “the tree”, “the spider” and “the thingamajig” while trying to guess who they are. If you’re into formerly disgraced YouTubers or ex-ice skaters proving they have surprisingly good voices, The Masked Singer is definitely for you.

There is, however, one show that really stands out for me, and it’s Naked and Afraid. It’s kind of like a gritty, much more brutal remake of I’m a Celebrity but with normal, everyday people who believe they can survive in the Costa Rican jungle, the Croatian mountains or the Nevada desert for 21 days, wearing no clothes and armed only with a knife and a fire-lighting tool. One man and one woman gets dropped into an inhospitable environment each week and told to tough it out for just under a month in torrential rain, searing heat or, once, a raft 11 miles away from land.

The interesting part of Naked and Afraid isn’t when one of them almost dies from ingesting parasites from a sea-snail or a poisonous fruit; nor is it when they manage to behead and cook a passing snake or knock down a wasps’ nest to consume the larvae inside for much-needed protein (though those all count in the greatest hits.)

No, the most interesting part is the fact that so many of the Americans competing have extremely gendered expectations of what’s going to happen. The programme pairs up a man and a woman, often from very conservative backgrounds in rural southern states, and they are expected to work as a team to achieve their goal of reaching 21 days out in the wilderness without “tapping out”. Out of necessity, a number of urgent activities need to be achieved: hunting for food, constructing a shelter, building a fire, and foraging for berries and fruits that can supplement their protein.

The people who compete on Naked and Afraid are pretty serious. Many are army veterans or hardened professional survivalists. They have also trained for months before going on the show. They arrive prepared to win – but some of them have very different mindsets to the others.

What I’ve noticed while watching is that a positive, open-minded view of the world is the one common factor which gets people through. I’ve tried to predict the outcome as people of all shapes and sizes come onto the show, but it’s impossible to tell. Heavy-set, musclebound men who are good at chopping wood often tap out after going without regular food for a couple of days. Small, sprightly people who should be able to easily make their way through the undergrowth find themselves unable to cope with the pain of sticks, stones and brambles.

Former Navy Seals who should be ideal candidates for life in harsh environments have uncompromising personalities which mean they can’t work effectively with their teammate to find food, water and shelter. It turns out that where survivalism is concerned, your strength and body type pale in comparison to your attitude.

I watched with fascination when one woman turned up who said her main aim in life was to find a man to look after her. She spent the first week angrily lolling round the camp while her male partner attempted to do all the work himself. Only when she realised they were at risk of starvation did she sharpen a stick and go out in search of an animal to kill – which she found, much to the joy of both of them.

His skills were in binding wood to make a good shelter and finding nuts and berries; hers were in finding animals and sourcing the protein. Once they were both able to accept that and abandon their gendered assumptions about each other, their ability to survive went up. After a rocky start, they made it through the 21 days.

Another interesting thing to watch is what happens a lot at the end of Naked and Afraid, if the couple on that week’s show make it. After an “extraction challenge”, they are eventually picked up by a truck or a boat that makes it way back to their remote location. Both men and women usually get emotional at that point, and both will say they can’t wait to see their families. But women usually do something additional: they repeat, again and again, “Nobody can take this from me.”

I find that a really damning indictment of how we view women’s achievements in western society. The fear that someone might try to minimise or deny what the female participants have done is real; they reassure themselves, again and again, that cameras have proven they did it, and that 21 days makes for an objective measure of the ability they always knew they had.

After this kind of raw reality TV, “soggy bottoms” on The Great British Bake Off don’t really cut it any more. Sorry, Noel.