C4 takes History Channel’s ‘Alone’ into UK, orders new Studio Lambert reality show

Alone

Channel 4 (C4) in the UK has commissioned a local version of History Channel’s survival show Alone and a new social experiment format from The Circle prodco, Studio Lambert, among a swathe of new programming.

ITV Studios-owned The Garden will make the first UK version of Alone, which will see ten contestants dropped into the remote Northern Canadian wilderness. The six-part show tracks their every move via self-shot footage, as contestants attempt to survive entirely alone, equipped with only a handful of basic tools. Whoever lasts longest will win £100,000.

The show is into its ninth season on A+E Network’s History Channel in the US, and has previously been remade in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, as well as being available globally via Netflix. An Australian version is also in the works, following a deal with format distributor A+E Networks.

All3Media’s Studio Lambert, meanwhile, is behind Rise & Fall, described as a “major new social experiment that explores the gap between the haves and the have-nots and asks how wealth and power shape the way we behave toward one another.”

The format, which also has Motion Content Group attached, is set in a glamorous world, with the powerful living in a opulent penthouse and everyone else living in a basement workplace. Through a series of games and challenges those in power will be responsible for making decisions which affect those who have none, whilst those without power will have to compete to build favour with those at the top.

In a unique game packed with drama, betrayal and power plays, players will have opportunities to rise and fall, from having everything to having nothing. The cash prize starts at zero and only builds if challenges devised by those in power are completed by those who are not. Those at the bottom must find a way to make it to the top, as only the most powerful and influential can win the game.

The two shows join C4’s Truth and Dare commissions, which aim to reflect the broadcaster’s “radical, irreverent and iconoclastic roots” as it celebrates 40 years of existence.

Programming includes Rogan Productions’ The ‘80s: The Future is Now (working title), a docuseries that charts the role of Britain in shaping much about our modern world during the 80’s.

Other docs include a special that follows the experiences of men who have extra-large penises, titled Too Large For Love, and Afghan Porn Star, which tracks a young Afghan woman who first escaped Afghanistan and then her UK-based family to “find liberation in a successful career in the porn industry.”