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Lost and Alone.

Is that a bear? Oh no, it's a tree.

Two years ago Sean Penn's excellent 'Into the Wild' charted the life of Christopher McCandless, the famed Alexander Supertramp, who ditched what he saw as a fruitless existence fulifilling his parents ambitions and dropped off the map entirely.  Ending up in Alaska, he finally achieved his dream of total isolation, but due to his own naivete and basic planning, well let's just say the story doesn't have a happy ending.

Now, Channel 4 brings us Alone in the Wild, wherein adventurer and professional bear scaredy-cat Ed Wardle attempts to survive 3 months in the Alaskan wilderness completely alone.  Both films touch on similar ground, but despite the likeability of Wardle, the latter utterly fails as a compelling piece of work.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think what Wardle has achieved is a momentous achievement, and something I myself couldn't possibly achieve.  At least not unless I could get twitter to keep me company.  But the documentary of his escapades utterly fails in its stated aims.

First of all, there's the title.  Wardle attempts three months of total isolation, but how exactly is one supposed to achieve this when you are documenting every single thing you do for a pre-commissioned documentary to be shown on National television? Very quickly we can see that the camera is Wardle's companion. He converses with it, lovingly sets up shots of himself before he does anything, and constantly informs us as to his deteriorating state of mind through Courtney love-esque diatribes. Most of which are about bears.

Ah yes, the bears.  Wardle is absolutely terrified of the potential eating he expects to befall him, which is quite understandable given there are thousands of bears in his area, and only one of him. But the edit of the documentary makes it seem as though he's occupied by no other thought. One would imagine that a man that scared of bears would probably been better off vacationing somewhere where there aren't quite so many bears. Like CentreParks, perhaps.

Unfortunately for the editors of the film, there don't actually seem to be any bears around to make these fears real. And so Wardle wanders around like a puppy that has yet to recognise its own shadow, barking at it and then cowering in fear as it moves.

But other than the regular 'there might be a bear somewhere' updates, where this doc really falls down is that being in total isolation in the middle of nowhere is actually quite dull. Once you get past the initial culture shock of the circumstance, you're left with someone wandering a wood complaining about the fact that he hasn't eaten very much, and that he has blisters.

But what really grated me was the similarity in tone to Penn's film. The way the whole thing is framed, the notching of the belt, the worry over berries, even the incidental music, which is alarmingly like Eddie Vedder's masterful score, it seems the whole thing is based on Penn's film.

This is all very well, of course, but is made all the more perplexing given that the film and the life of McCandless are never mentioned, even in passing.  I'm presuming there must be some rights issue involved, but given that that tale is clearly the basis for the whole adventure, it's very odd.

I watched the first episode and attempted to do the same again last night, but halfway through had to turn over. It is only down to Wardle's immensely entertaining breakdown and the fact that he reminds me of Desmond from Lost that I lasted that long.