This is a battle between two shows. The first was a Sunday morning staple from
the very earliest days of reality TV, which, when looked back on from 2019, is imbued
with youthful nostalgia and innocence.
The second is a reboot of the format after nearly a decade’s hiatus. The cynic in me wonders if this return is a
response to the discovery by ITV2 of
the formula for 16-34 TV gold: beautiful young people minus clothing plus sunny
island equals captive audience (that would otherwise be on Instagram and not
watching telly). Yes, I was talking
about Love Island just then everybody, but
this post is about Shipwrecked
in all of its guises, on T4,
e4 and Channel 4, and with and without its
suffix: colon Battle Of The Islands.
Cast your minds back.
It’s nearly the Millennium (which I still think of as the Minnellium, as
the word better encapsulates the absolute naffness of this pointless event) and
we children have been brought by our mother to Devon for a party with old
family friends. I remember two things:
my sister’s guinea pig died while we were away, continuing our pets’ tradition
of snuffing it on special occasions, and I laughed so hard during a game of
cards that I farted loudly in front of my parents’ grown-up friends. But, at the same time, months before Big Brother, Shipwrecked came to our
screens. Those first series, one running
in 2000 and two (yes, two!) following in 2001, were from a more naïve era. There was no competition. This was simply a documentary crew following
young people living a back-to-basics existence while receiving permanent skin
damage in the sun of the South Pacific.
Animals were slaughtered, people got sand in their cracks, and dramas
ensued about kissing boys and raising gay community flags. But this wasn’t 24-hour surveillance; a film
crew chased the islanders among the palms, waving a boom and clutching cameras,
so we never knew how much was reality and how much was showing off. Rumours later abounded that the juiciest
action never made it to air: an island strewn with condom wrappers was the only
physical evidence of how the crew and the cast inevitably succumbed to the
holiday combination of heat, scantily cladness and being away.
Five years later, the format returned, only this time there
were two islands. And they were at
war. Adding some spice and jeopardy, new
arrivals would appear each week, spending time with rival tribes before
ultimately picking their permanent home.
The most populous tribe would nab some prize money, which, once divided
twenty-five ways, was probably just enough to cover the psychological
counselling anyone would need after spending weeks in a tropical paradise and
then having to return to the UK. As a
sixth former, this was religious viewing.
You needed to be able to enter the common room debate about whether you’d
rather be a Tiger or a Shark. I honestly
can’t remember which of the two was the tribe for me, but I do know it was the
same animal each series. T4, a curious
youth strand on Channel 4, had cornered the market in weekend morning hangover
TV, and we, graduating from being Inbetweeners,
were more or less legally allowed to drink alcohol. Every weekend was filled with eighteenth birthday
parties and all the Smirnoff
Ices you could drink. Shipwrecked:
Battle Of The Islands was perfect viewing.
I would go into more detail on what occurred in these
episodes between 2006 and 2009, but this period, at least in terms of the
internet, is a very long way away. How
we’re able to excavate ancient ruins and carbon-date millennia-old fossils, yet
I can’t find a non-pixellated image of the 2008 cast is beyond me. I do recall, though, that at some point, the
scheduling shifted from weekend mornings to weekday evenings. More specifically, Tuesdays. In this age before reliable catch up and when
your dad still controlled the VCR, I was devastated. On Tuesday nights I pushed trolleys around
the car park of Waitrose in
Cobham. I still therefore miss the
series I never saw, despite the generous wages and benefits of the John Lewis Partnership. Instead, I have memories of dodging the BMWs
and Audis while fetching back the abandoned shopping carts, refusing to wear
the high-vis jacket even when it snowed as it stunk of someone else’s BO,
overhearing mums telling their children to work hard at school so they didn’t end
up like me (despite me having a place at Oxford) until I finally got moved indoors. Ramming twelve trolleys into the back of a
Mercedes might have been part of it (the driver was still inside).
One series I was able to enjoy fully was the 2008
season. This was when I started my job
in media. It was July 2008. I had misspent a year in a headhunting firm
where people were very serious, discussing the economy or rugby or braying
about their children. I had got in
constant trouble so I was determined to keep a low profile in this new
role. I would resist piping up in all
office discussions until I had proven I was good at my job. But then, I overheard new colleagues (who are
still beloved to this day) talking about the previous night’s episode of
Shipwrecked. It took all my willpower
(and there’s not much) to resist wheeling over there in my desk chair and
joining in. But what it did prove was
that I had come to the right place.
And now, it’s back.
This time, we’re broadcasting at 9pm each weeknight on e4, so we can
have as much swearing and boobies as we like.
Sadly missing is Morcheeba’s The Sea, a track I will
forever associate with Shipwrecked. We
have a new narrator. Gone are Andrew Lincoln and Craig Kelly, both
of whom sounded bored out of their minds while describing the antics of
attention-seeking twentysomethings. Vick Hope gently pokes fun
at the characters, but mostly gets on with it, which somehow leaves me craving
the acid-tongued lashings of Love Island’s Iain Stirling. But much is the same. Even Aygo by Toyota (the old
sponsor of T4) is back on board (shout out to the friend who did this deal). We have Sharks and we have Tigers. The ante is upped though, as the new
arrivals, who have so far in this first week come in pairs, also have to be
picked by the island they choose, with a mismatch resulting in a one-way ticket
back to Blighty. This has brought high
tension and just desserts, though I have just watched the fifth episode, where
the complication of having a pair of identical twins as the arrivals made the
format seem slightly cruel. Having gone
through secondary education with five twins in my form of thirty (and a further
two pairs in the year group – clearly something in the water in Horsley) my
twindar felt quite sensitive to the onslaught.
Sadly I’m not yet watching this on a massive f***-off telly
in my own home. I can pick between the
non-HD live broadcast where I’m overwhelmed by adverts, or catch up on All4,
where I’m overwhelmed by adverts. Both
scenarios also include the inhabitants of the flat upstairs, divided from ours
by a ceiling made presumably of hopes and dreams, stomping about constantly, so
if I’m not distracted by the heel-walking of the morbidly obese, I’m squinting
at the low-def picture, filling in the gaps with my imagination. This year, the Sharks are a lovely bunch,
while the Tigers have a nastier streak.
I’m therefore definitely a Tiger, as that sort of person is always more
interesting.
Is it as good as we remember? Well, after some acclimatisation, this could
be a vintage year. Times have changed,
and it’s hard to work out if this is a dating show or a survivalist
documentary. In addition, I’m now ten
years older than most of the contestants, rather than them seeming like
inhabitants of a distant future adulthood that was years away. I can’t help but wonder if it would be
rewarding if the cast had greater maturity and life experience. Maybe I could bowl up: hi, I’m Rob; I’m 33
and work in advertising; I enjoy too much telly and going to bed early. Maybe not.
It’s just that these young people seem to shriek so much. There’s a boat: cue screaming. There’s a palm tree: cue caterwauling. There’s a pontoon: cue sh*t being lost. Then a friend articulated my reservation
perfectly: this is hangover TV, but we don’t have hangovers.
