The Island with Bear Grylls is a British reality television programme which premiered on Channel 4 on 5 May 2014 and ran for five series, plus a renamed sixth series and a spin-off series. Narrated by Bear Grylls, participants in the show are placed on remote uninhabited islands as a test of their survival skills. They are left completely alone, filming themselves, with only the clothes they are wearing and some basic tools and training.
Initially pitched as an assessment of the capabilities of British men in the 21st century, the first series (2014) featured 13 male participants. Following accusations of sexism, the second series (2015) used two islands, with 14 women on one, and 14 men on the other. The third series (2016) featured eight men and eight women abandoned on opposite sides of a single island with the groups merging in episode 2. The fourth series (2017) focused primarily on age rather than gender and featured initially separate tribes of older (30 to 66 year-old) people versus younger people (18 to 30 years old). The fifth series (2018) involved people from different social classes based on their yearly salary earnings.
The sixth series, now renamed Treasure Island with Bear Grylls, started airing on 8 September 2019. This series is the first to involve cash prizes, dropped from air to the island for the participants to find. A celebrity spin off version, Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls, was first broadcast as part of a charity campaign for Stand Up to Cancer UK in September 2016.
On 22 September 2019, Channel 4 confirmed that The Island would not return for a seventh series in 2020. The seventh series was due to be filmed and aired in 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both the civilian and celebrity series would not return for 2021.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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