The Island with Bear Grylls, review – it's toffs versus toughs as no class-war cliché is left unturned
Imagine Love Island, minus the flirting but with survival guru Bear Grylls hiding in the bushes explaining how ineptly the contestants are performing. That's the premise that has more or less sustained four seasons of The Island (Channel 4), in which punters are marooned upon a random atoll and forced to endure rain, hunger and Grylls's hurricane-force condescension.
This year, the formula has been tweaked. Forget man versus nature. Now it's toffs versus toughs. Episode one began with two parties of eight stranded somewhere wet, windy and crocodile-infested in the Pacific. In one corner were high-earners with diamond-cut accents and names such as Nathaniel and Barnes. In the other a group from the opposite end of the wealth spectrum who proclaimed their mastery of "banter" and said things like "I grew up in the concrete jungle".
No class-war cliché was left unturned. "When I saw them coming down the beach it was like the northern dole bus had broken down," proclaimed one member of Team Toff of his new beach-mates. "You know how you have a language barrier with Spanish people? It's kind of like that but with posh people," reckoned steelworker Ben.
Shouty Shereen, a boarding school-educated doctor, was soon rubbing the low earners the wrong way by admonishing their tardy hut construction (to be fair, her own side hated her too). Rather than help make camp, two from the lower-income team meanwhile splashed in the surf, leading Shereen to threaten that they'd be forced to fend for themselves.
The problem was that there were no likeable characters. Cheeky chappie Phil was self-proclaimed leader of the "working-class" contestants – but his chipperness grew more irritating the longer he hogged the camera. On the posh side, curly haired Nathaniel ("Tan" for short, obviously) was a bag of nervous energy and art dealer Barnes was so bumptious viewers may have spent the entire episode wishing for a coconut to fall on his blue-blooded bonce.
There was a nasty stand-off at the end as the toffs voted to establish their own society and then pinched their erstwhile comrades's supplies. "They're a bunch of common thieves," reckoned one of the lower earners,"That's how people get rich…they steal."
"Two things to remember: courage and kindness," had been the advice of Grylls, whose contribution was restricted to popping up with stating-the-obvious assessments of the respective side's performances. Whatever about courage, "kindness" would have involved a passing ship conveying these walking stereotypes back to their regular lives – and off our TV screens.