08 Nov 2026, 08:30 PM

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Is it ever OK to leave your family – including small children – to live in the wilderness or walk around the world?The latest season of Alone – the US TV competition in which cocky survivalists are dropped into a remote, inhospitable wilderness only to be rapidly humbled by squirrels and their own colons – has just ended. I love Alone. The landscapes are spectacular and their implacable hostility to humans obscurely cheering; plus, I get real atavistic satisfaction from watching my favourite contestants make shelters or manage to trap rabbits (grim, but at least every scrap of every creature is usually used – someone even ate a hare’s partially digested stomach contents once). I’m also gripped by what it says about being a man.Obviously, the contestants aren’t all men, and anyone who goes on a survival show confident they can outlast 11 others living off shrews and moss is a particular personality type. But they are mostly men and it’s striking how many seem better equipped to tackle starvation and grizzly bears than “experiencing emotions” or “being a father and partner”. Contestants are always suddenly remembering, filthy and shivering, that they have families and agonising over what to do about it. On day three this time (spoilers ahead), David, a man with a baby back home, tapped out – Alonespeak for admitting defeat – declaring: “I know the kind of father I’m committed to being; a good father doesn’t take days off from that.” Continue reading...

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