Erm we couldn’t find a title card on Google Images at the time of writing, so we’ve nicked this photo from the RTS of a CCTV camera used as sort of visual synecdoche.
Thursdays, 9pm,
Channel 4
We should be all over this as The Sort Of Thing We Like but really something about it is rubbing me up the wrong way before it’s even aired and I can’t put my finger on what it is.
Nevertheless Hunted asks 14 people to go on the run for 28 days and avoid capture by trackers to make some sort of point about the surveillance state.
It’s edgier and uniquely Channel 4 Wanted, basically, except already filmed as opposed to live and in six weekly installments and made as a documentary than a game show. “Real life thriller” they’re calling it. We’ll see.
Less than ten minutes in and I am loving this already – the background music are adding to the urgency and sinister style.
This could be a good one, Brig.
Yep I enjoyed that! However next week I will switch off before the credits away to avoid the “next week on Hunted” thing.
And as for the lady who kept ringing home – Sheesh, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE IN HIDING, WOMAN!
Mmm, it’s going to be the sort of show you’ll really like if you can buy into it but I think it’s going to leave casual people and the sorts who can be a sceptical a bit cold. They’re trying to hide with a massive cameraman! How are they recreating CCTV?
For a ‘real life thriller’ it was rather low on thrills. Man gets in a car! Woman complains of a headache! Better dressed man slams a phone down!
I think concentrating on only a few of the contestants is probably wise, although it’s a bit of a shame all the contestants in the first ep were white and well off when some different points of view might have been a bit more interesting. Similarly I think the audience are more likely to want to see the contestants experiences – we love an underdog – and I think the show probably concentrates too much on the tracker’s techniques, which I get is the point of the documentary but probably hurts it.
Will be interested to see how it does.
AUA! debut delayed to Sept.21st
1.93m (9.9%) – 20% up on the quarterly slot average. I suspect they will be satisfied if not overwhelmed, hoping people talk about it and that it grows. If it’s any lower next week they’ll be gutted, they spent a lot of money and effort pushing it.
Cheers Paul, and apparently it did very well with younger viewers.
At 9pm Who Do You Think You are won the slot with 3.9m (20%). There was very little separating all he other terrestrial networks. 1.7m for CBB, 1.8m for Cradle to Grave, 2.0m for Stephen Fry in Central America.
Demographically:
In ABC1s Hunted got 0.9m (10%) – essentially in a three way tie for second place in the slot, with Stephen Fry on ITV and Cradle to Grave on BBC Two. Celebrity Big Brother got 0.6m (7%).
In 16-34 year olds it got 0.6m (18%) – winning the slot just ahead of Big Brother (0.5m, 14%)
To be honest, I found that poor.
Three problems.
1) Brig’s right: they needed to tell more of the runners’ story, and peddle less of the
WantedHunted Organisation’s propaganda.2) Is anyone going to challenge the copper’s claims of competence? Or is the point of the show to demonstrate that the police have been given these powers, but the police do not have the ability to use them effectively?
3) You are on the run. You are lugging around a cameraperson, which doesn’t help. You are hearing annoying muzak everywhere you go, and you are being edited to suit the producers’ pre-written narrative.
The programme was predictable: release three runners, capture one about halfway through, advance the narrative so the episode ends with an attempted capture.
This actually felt more artificial than many scripted dramas, which cannot be good.
I enjoyed it, but a couple of observations. Firstly did the pairs only have one camera person between them, meaning they were effectively forced to remain together.
Secondly it all seems to be in the name of an experiment rather than for a prize – I do wonder how a cash reward for surviving the month might change things.
Kind of agree with Brig’s point about the focus on the hunters – I think the big problem of it is much of it is quite boring mundane desk work going through computer records – would be interesting to have a second team of hunters relying on non-technological methods.
I enjoyed it, if not being totally petrified by the concepts of what the police can do (intended of course.)
Surprised no-one here has picked up that the couple picked up half way through were also the first couple eliminated on prized apart. They’ve had a busy, if completely unsuccessful, summer.
I rather liked Hunted. I think it’s weird that C4 have been advertising it as:
1- an all-action shock-per-minute thriller, when it’s clearly an exercise in slow tension.
2- the best thing literally ever, if you look at the amount of ads it’s been getting around London.
The game is sound. I expect a few behind the scenes rules had to be in place (ie. no-one tried to set up a payg phone or use an internet cafe). I think a lot important decisions have been made well, for example having the start be a surprise (so that you get the whole ‘frantic running around the house’ sequence), having it be fair game to steal laptops but not hack the password, having a mix of pairs and singles, having new players start in each episode. I think Dr dude summed it up well when he said the intellectual battle turns into a battle of willpower.
I can see why people want more runners and less hunters. Personally, I would have liked more of both, because I was really enjoying both. I *think*, though, the hunters might have more and more interesting comments to make over the course of the series. Maybe. I’m being optimistic: if we have another sequence where the hunters all gather in an office for the boss man to (effectively) say: ‘you must all try harder’ then I’ll lose faith.
My main downside is that I think the hunters are so well equipped that they’re never going to lose a foot or road chase. This takes a bit of the tension out of the capture sequences. I wonder if there are better episode climaxes still to come, because this one was very lacking.
Interesting to me that this and Special Forces have come along in the same month – I’m personally quite a fan of the docu-game so hope we get more of them.
This is on tonight. I keep having to remind myself of this rather than naturally looking forward to it which is not a good sign.
I’m getting conflicting reports on this, one suggesting it lost 200k but still outdid everyone in the demo, another suggesting it held.
Either way not a terrible result, I was expecting 1.6 so it’s outdone what I reckoned it would do and that’s the only figure that matters.
Now I’m very confused, Broadcast suggesting 1.5m, third in the slot.
Well I enjoyed it, and it certainly had me thinking how I would evade capture. I suppose at the end of the day though once your card is marked you’re getting caught some day or another unless you’re really lucky so is it even worth the bother…
The long running threads for this have been entertaining, but tonight’s was the first time it delivered the edge-of-your-seat tension that had been promised.
It was brilliant but at the same time not quite good enough. Will it require three episodes of build up to feel tense? I think that’s quite a difficult thing to sell in this day and age.
Part of tonight’s episode felt a bit rigged so that they could explain and sort of demonstrate how a security operation works at a particular venue.
Interesting how once the hunters had a lead they seemed to focus on that exact location rather than the possibilities along the route.
I did think that, but suspect it was a production decision. There’s, what? Ten, twelve stops on that route? In the absence of specific intelligence favouring one over the others it makes sense to send everyone to London (where they’re based anyway). Either way you get great content – either the collar they ended up with, or baffled looking investigators on a platform cutting away to Ricky stepping happily off a train in Milton Keynes or Crewe and disappearing without a trace.
Anyway, 1.39m (7.0%) last night. Last in the slot. 1.74 (9.5%) for CBB final.
Third in slot in ABC1s with 0.8m. Ahead of Cradle to Grave (0.7m) and CBB (0.6m), but well behind WDYTYA (2.4m) and the rugby (1.5m).
Second in slot among 16-34 year olds (0.5m), narrowly ahead of CBB (0.4m). Well ahead of both BBC channels (0.2m each). Narrowly behind rugby (0.6m for whole show, 0.7m in the hour from 21:00).
In other news 0.2m (4.0%) for Deal in its new slot.
Thanks Paul.
Just watched this week’s ep(5) of Hunted. A lot (maybe too much?) of interesting moments.
First the completely random fluke capture of one couple when looking for another. I think this was mishandled actually, it would have been much more fun to present it as part of the Singhs’ (the sought couple) episode than this one – and the coincidence wasn’t really explained by the narration, which lead to awkward moments where all the hunters are clearly astonished that this has happened, but the audience aren’t told properly.
There was a genuine drama moment with one newlywed couple having a quite major fallout.
It was also nice in the final quarter to see the hunters do a much more ‘modern’ attack on a couple – going after their network of friends using the internet, monitoring for suspicious texts – it felt a bit more like the experiment I hoped this show could be.
This lead to a great stakeout, and another ‘this is more like what I hoped for’ finish. Clever to have the gang from the office go down to the house to do the capture, too.
One criticism of the later part of the series is that although I’m finding it more exciting, there is always a lot more screentime given to Whoever’s getting caught Tonight.
Anyway, I and the other 207 viewers still strongly enjoying Hunted.
Well that didn’t end how i expected.
Was looking to see if Brig was watching but his twitter feed wasn’t showing up on the site.
No spoilers but likely second series?
Thoroughly enjoyed this
:o)
I have the last three eps on my Tivo but I kind of lost interest when Dr Allen got caught.
Second series? It’s lost half the viewers it started with, although I don’t know how it’s been doing on catch-up. It was reportedly quite an expensive show. I don’t know what a second series would teach anyone that hadn’t come up already. There’s been no real buzz about it. 40% chance I reckon, mainly because CBS bought it.
Pretty sure you’d know already, but I really hope we see Hunted S2. I think that it was pretty young-skewing (?) which might work in its favour – anecdotally, it’s the first gameshow that I’ve seen people of my age who “don’t do gameshows” getting excited about.
I agree you’d struggle to replicate it without just repeating it exactly, and they can’t push the experiment angle so much a second time over, but I found, talking to people who were enjoying it, they did like the core game and were actually tuning in more to see if anyone gets caught.
I also think it was hurt by poor story to episode allocation: e1 was way too slow, and I can see a lot of people following Brig and giving up after e3, which is especially sad when I think e5 was really overloaded with good moments.
0.99/ 4.6% according to DS for the finale, that will include same day timeshift but it was a crowded night last night.
I don’t know. Like I said after episode 1 if you can buy into it you’ll love it but it will leave everyone else a bit cold, this turns out to be bang on with the few people I know watching it really really liking it, but no-one else I know giving a damn. I’m fine with cult-hit, but the commercial side of me doesn’t think a second run is worthwhile – it’s unlikely the figure goes up from a million next year. We’ll see though.
Although feeling heavily scripted (I suppose it had to be to make for good TV), the ending race was actually quite tense.
For a series 2 twist they could maybe could get a team of Joe Public using the same techniques as the professionals to try and track the fugitives down. As one of the guys on the show said the best TV material were the ones making the most of the experience and trying to wind up the hunters rather than just trying to hide away in a darkened room for a month!
I really liked how it ended – nice to have a “finish line” – but I do wonder if series 2 would be a case of diminishing returns.
I agree with the comments that the flow through the series was a bit lumpy, but I’m glad I stuck with it.
I wish I had known at the start that there would have been an Extraction Point, because to me it gave the whole 28 days more meaning. I too am glad I stuck through it, I hope an S2 can try the concept again.