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First Review: The Lost Tribes

“No phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe it’s primitive as can be.”

So went the jingle of Gilligan’s Island.

And that single premise probably led to the modern day version of Survivor. But it’s also a tactic employed by the producers of The Lost Tribes.

Based on a UK series, Ticket to the Tribes, this reality series looks like making three Aussie families watercooler conversation over the coming weeks.

They are the Sherry family of Victoria and the Fraser and Povey families from New South Wales. Each willingly signed up for an adventure holiday, without realising where it would lead.

As it turns out, it led them to far flung corners of the world: in Indonesia, Namibia and Zululand.

The three families were forced to live by tribal rules. And they are a stark contrast to modern Australian standards. Some of them require the women to be subservient to men. Another bans women from using water. No shower, no bathing, no nothing. Suddenly the idea of an adventure holiday goes out the window.

With a series such as this, much is dependent on casting. It is one of the reasons The Block did so well in its first year. And I have to say they’ve done well here.

The reactions of the “ordinary” families are extreme. Shocked faces, shocked responses, anger, a refusal to participate. All the families have teenage children, several with “princess” daughters used to the comforts of modern living, and used to having an opinion. Here they are all denied. These kids don’t react well to being made to sleep on the floor, no pillow, no air conditioning, and worse, in speaking only when they are spoken to. They moan and complain to their parents, already struggling to deal with the extreme conditions for ten days.

For the Fraser Family of New South Wales, living with the Zulu tribe in South Africa sees the women of the family forced to smear a red mud over their bodies all day every day. Here the women hide the colour of their skin and are not permitted to bathe.

There is no interpreter for the families. Simple questions like asking where to go to the toilet become complicated simulations.

Even more interesting to watch are the Povey Family from New South Wales. This family of four (father, wife and 2 daughters) are led on an excruciating boat trip and jungle trek to reach the Mentawai tribe in remote Indonesia. It is an exhausting and enduring trial just to reach the location. They are close to breaking point before they even arrive, and some of their statements are extreme, even hilarious. The mother could be ripped straight out of Kath and Kim, taking an uninformed and opinionated stance on the primitive lifestyle which will see her having to feed pigs.

It’s guiltily delicious at times.

The series is narrated by Charles Wooley, who, like Mike Munro seems to voice many Nine docudramas. His heavy-handed, slowly-worded 60 Minutes style is unnecessary in this series where the pictures are doing all the work for us. Less would have been more here, and Nine needs to find more on-air talent other than its old reliables. And do we really need reminders after every commercial break of what we have seen before. American storytelling habits are taking over here….

Otherwise The Lost Tribes is terrific fun. Nine needs a new hit, can they do it here?

The Lost Tribes premieres 6:30pm Sunday May 6 on Nine.

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2 Responses

  1. You’ll notice I’ve carefully worded that it could make them watercooler talk rather than will…. the potential is there as some of the individuals are a bit of a laugh… depends how the audience connects with them. At least Nine has the perfect old timeslot (where The Block did big business), and on commercial TV it’s got a better shot than the ABC.

  2. Great review David, although we’ve seen it all before. About 2 years ago we saw a similar American series from the National Geographic channel on the ABC, and it was fine, but it definitely wasn’t ‘watercooler’ talk. I’ll give it a go, but I think I’ll stick to whatever is on on the other networks.

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