One year after they retreated into the harsh Scottish wilderness with visions of TV glory, the cast of a Survivor-style British reality show have emerged into a world that appears to have forgotten about them.
Dubbed “Eden,” the show was cancelled in October and all social media accounts connected with the program have gone eerily silent.
What’s more, the 10 remaining contestants have been deliberately kept in the dark about world events.
After 12 months battling flies in the Scottish highlands, they are now discovering a world where Donald Trump is president, Theresa May is prime minister, and the U.K. will soon no longer be part of the European Union.
“Eden was definitely an experiment and it hasn’t gone well,” a source close to the show told U.K. tabloid The Sun in January.
Produced by the U.K.’s Channel Four, Eden was publicized as “23 men and women (trying) to build a new life and new society from scratch.”
Starting in March 2016, participants were placed at a fenced, 240-hectare estate in rural Scotland.
To complete the contestants’ isolation, the estate is barred to public access — a measure which required a special exemption in Scotland, where “freedom to roam” laws allow the public to access private property.
The 23 participants were equipped with livestock, seeds and basic supplies. The idea was that they would become self-sufficient by year’s end.
“We gave them a huge expanse of area, somewhere that offered everything they needed … away from the rest of the world,” explained a show creator in an introductory video.
But the show’s downfall appears to have been ratings. Viewers dropped from 1.7 million to 800,000 after only four episodes — and all social media accounts connected to the show have been dormant since October.
“Eden will be returning but we can’t confirm exactly when yet,” reads one of the last posts on the Eden Facebook page.
Conditions in the camp also reportedly began to deteriorate in the ensuing months. The patch of land is notoriously windy and beset with bloodsucking midges — which is why locals can’t seem to remember it being farmed at any point since the Bronze Age.
The four heavily edited episodes witnessed by British viewers already started to show hints of a Lord of the Flies-style unravelling, with the only American participant leaving early after alleging that she had been bullied by the Brits.
Even before winter set in, others had also begun to flee. By the time the experiment ended on March 23, only 10 remained, reportedly subsisting in part off smuggled junk food and booze.
“I left because it wasn’t what I was told it was going to be, what you see on tv is all bullshit,” Tom Wah wrote in an August Tweet soon after his departure.
@burnsy105 no one pushed me out, I left because it wasn't what I was told it was going to be, what you see on tv is all bullshit
— Tom Wah (@Tom_wah) August 19, 2016
In a recent statement, Channel Four said they would consider cutting together some of the remaining Eden footage into an episode “when everyone has come out.”
• Email: thopper@nationalpost.com | Twitter: TristinHopper
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