Eden: Paradise Lost
Well, that was a depressing programme?
Eden: Paradise Lost was an ‘experiment’ where 23 people were put into a remote part of Scotland to create a community over a year. The original plan of regular episodes to watch progress was canned and, instead, we ended up with a five-part summary of what happened. And what happened was a horrible display of bullying, nastiness, machismo, spite and generally everything that is ugly about people.
The white men ended up together in a shack in the woods spending their time wanking, eating meat and working out how to drive everyone who wasn’t them out. They were exposed as liars and schemers.
So far, so fascinating, but I have some questions?
- Would watching people get along fine be worth watching on a Saturday night?
- Where had all the contraband been coming from before ‘phone-gate’?
- What else was on the thousands of hours of footage that didn’t get used?
- Could the same material have made several entirely different programmes?
- How did they select the participants? Once again, would footage of nice, mature and reasonable folk cooperating be worth watching?
- Why didn’t anyone mention the midges?
- Didn’t anyone think that it would have been more interesting to have each role filled by both a man and a woman?
- Was Jack not paying attention during his Army training?
- How much did it all cost?
- How much influence did the outlay and potential loss have on the content of the programme?
- Is it possible to have an experiment that is also entertainment?
- Why isn’t this on the curriculum to explain how sexism and other forms of bigotry work?
- What would I have done?
