Hunted- Channel 4

[Trainfan344]

I have been watching this series and as a train enthusiast I presume myself to be rather picky, so I let a few things slide... But showing a scotrail train while displaying the text Lincolnshire... Surely the general public is going to notice that...

 

[Simon11]

It wasn't the only mistake, I'm sure one of them was on a Virgin Pendo train, yet the camera feed overhead showed a Southeastern HS1 service

 

[Ash Bridge]

I have been watching this series and as a train enthusiast I presume myself to be rather picky, so I let a few things slide... But showing a scotrail train while displaying the text Lincolnshire... Surely the general public is going to notice that...

I wouldn't bank on it

 

[HMS Ark Royal]

Lets be generous and say its a Scotrail unit going to work at Southern

 

[Nym]

You mean like all these "CCTV Feeds" on the train that is just the camera man holding up the camera where they think a CCTV camera would be, when in fact none are fitted in that location and the cameras fitted are completely different to what is being used?

 

[johntea]

Apologies for bumping this but tonight

-Fugitive gets lift off random stranger to Neath railway station, uses their phone to make contact with a relative - traced by the Hunters

-Fugitive is shown buying a train ticket from the counter to Reading

-Fugitive beats Hunters to Reading and evades them until they have the bright idea of following the canal and catch up with him at a pub

I know it is all TV and some parts are replicated for the purpose of entertainment, but in a real life situation could the Hunters really phone up the station and find out what train ticket destination some random bloke had purchased at the counter, or even at a machine - all in such a short space of time?

 

[TheEdge]

The original series of this was really good for the most part, it didn't feel as utterly staged as this one.

 

[Tetchytyke]

It isn't staged exactly: you can't fix a programme when there is a cash prize on offer, and Hunted is offering a £100,000 prize.

However most of the "powers of the state" are "replicated". Obviously Channel Four can't just ring up the police for a CCTV feed for the purpose of good telly. What this means in reality is that the camera operator with the fugitive reports to the programme researchers whenever they believe the fugitive would be on CCTV, on ANPR, or would have used the postal service, or shown up on a mobile phone cell site. The Hunters are only given this information if they've worked out they need it. But the information comes from the camera operator working with the fugitive, not from any other source.

It makes it feel very staged because, really, most of the premise of the programme is fabricated.

 

[SpacePhoenix]

Just reading about the program on the the channel 4 website, it reminds of a program that was on many years ago now where you had two contestants with backpacks on, one with cash it and I think one without. They were chased by someone who had a gadget which locked the backpacks, he often used a helicopter to chase them, forgot the name of the program.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The Interceptor, made by the same people who did Treasure Hunt and the Crystal Maze.

Or so wikipedia tells me

 

[northwichcat]

A couple of weeks ago they showed two of them on an ATW 158 in North Wales but twice went to aerial shots of EMT trains - the first time an EMT 158 but the second time an EMT 156!

 

[DasLunatic]

A proper remake of Interceptor would be miles better than this. With all the new technology, it'd also be a lot more interesting....

 

[Deltic1]

I remember watching the last series where one bloke had boarded a Pendolino somewhere up north bound for Euston, but in the 'out the window' shot while the train was passing through Bletchley the train was going north!

 

[plymothian]

Just reading about the program on the the channel 4 website, it reminds of a program that was on many years ago now where you had two contestants with backpacks on, one with cash it and I think one without. They were chased by someone who had a gadget which locked the backpacks, he often used a helicopter to chase them, forgot the name of the program.

It's more like a previous Channel 4 game show, Wanted, where 2 contestants had to travel round the country completing various tasks, followed by a 'Tracker'; they weren't allowed to pass through the same OS grid twice. Every time they were caught on camera by the Tracker they lost part of the prize money. The culmination being the contestants had to choose a phone box at the end of the week and the tracker had to catch them in it during the hour long live show.

 

[Harbornite]

I doubt that Joe Public is going to notice, let alone care.

 

[MotCO]

Does anyone remember a show, probably 10 - 15 years ago, where some teams are dropped in the middle of a foreign country, often a jungle or similar, without being told which country it was, (and possibly without any money), and they had to get back to Britain? I thought it was called Lost, but I can't find any reference to it. Or did I just dream it ?

 

[SpacePhoenix]

Does anyone remember a show, probably 10 - 15 years ago, where some teams are dropped in the middle of a foreign country, often a jungle or similar, without being told which country it was, (and possibly without any money), and they had to get back to Britain? I thought it was called Lost, but I can't find any reference to it. Or did I just dream it ?

Looks like it might have been called Lost

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_(game_show)

 

[greatkingrat]

Apologies for bumping this but tonight

-Fugitive gets lift off random stranger to Neath railway station, uses their phone to make contact with a relative - traced by the Hunters

-Fugitive is shown buying a train ticket from the counter to Reading

-Fugitive beats Hunters to Reading and evades them until they have the bright idea of following the canal and catch up with him at a pub

I know it is all TV and some parts are replicated for the purpose of entertainment, but in a real life situation could the Hunters really phone up the station and find out what train ticket destination some random bloke had purchased at the counter, or even at a machine - all in such a short space of time?

They should get a member of this forum to take part. With split tickets and obscure routes, they will never be found!

 

[northwichcat]

They should get a member of this forum to take part. With split tickets and obscure routes, they will never be found!

They started the series in central Birmingham and most of them had pre-arranged cars taking them out of the city. I'm surprised no-one had the idea of pre-arranging a train trip to a station without CCTV, then switching trains or walking to another nearby station and going in a different direction.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The last episode was so synthetic, just "randomly" looking for boats at the Isle of Sheppey and getting there seconds too late. Still really good telly, but the last bit just felt so forced. Though it was the same in the first series, forcing the contestants into a bottleneck is just forcing the issue.

Glad Nick got away though, he deserved to just for the decoy in the last episode

 

[northwichcat]

The last episode was so synthetic, just "randomly" looking for boats at the Isle of Sheppey and getting there seconds too late. Still really good telly, but the last bit just felt so forced. Though it was the same in the first series, forcing the contestants into a bottleneck is just forcing the issue.

Did you notice how the Canadian ex-Navy person on the Hunted team was invisible in the earlier episodes and then they kept featuring him more in the later episodes?

Glad Nick got away though, he deserved to just for the decoy in the last episode

Surprised Ayo got to end especially considering they had the flat he was in surrounded but missed him going out of the back entrance.

With the two Yorkshire girls I'm not surprised they got caught as they kept using the same method to get around and knew they had already been reported by someone for using that method.

 

[Abpj17]

I'm delighted Nick made it.

I agree the ending was very artificial. Fortunately the needing to meet at the rendez-vous point didn't lead to either of them being caught.

 

[johntea]

Did you notice how the Canadian ex-Navy person on the Hunted team was invisible in the earlier episodes and then they kept featuring him more in the later episodes?



Surprised Ayo got to end especially considering they had the flat he was in surrounded but missed him going out of the back entrance.

With the two Yorkshire girls I'm not surprised they got caught as they kept using the same method to get around and knew they had already been reported by someone for using that method.

I reckon they were allowed to get away with it so they featured in the last episode as they were entertainment value for the show but would have never been allowed to have a chance for the prize money as they had become too predictable with the service station method

The very first episode of the series was a bit artificial too with the 'near miss' at catching Nick literally minutes after he had started going on the run

 

[JohnR]

If I bought a ticket to Reading (or wherever) I would have just got off a stop or two early.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The very first episode of the series was a bit artificial too with the 'near miss' at catching Nick literally minutes after he had started going on the run

You can't fake programmes with cash prizes on offer.

I get the feeling that the rendez-vous was in for the good telly- the real rules being if you make it to the last day you get to win- but everything else will have been legit. Bear in mind that most of the tracking stuff- ANPR, CCTV, etc- is faked for the purpose of the programme ("CCTV" footage is basically the fugitive's camera operator holding their camera up where they think a CCTV camera would be; "ANPR" is the operator telling the show what car they're in, etc etc)

 

[northwichcat]

They could have faked bits. For instance, the bit about having hunters reading to catch Nick on the canal path on the first day could have been faked, as Nick didn't see them and they didn't see Nick that bit could have been artificially created after the 28 days ended to make Nick look like more of an outsider.

The hunters would have known all along that Nick's decoy was a fake simply because the production members who were following Nick were not with the decoy.
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If I bought a ticket to Reading (or wherever) I would have just got off a stop or two early.

They did consider that possibly. However, what they didn't consider is breaking the journey on an alternate slower route. I'm not sure what the possibilities are for the journey in question but if your ticket was for Manchester to York you could use your ticket to get to somewhere like Knaresborough where I imagine there would be a lot less CCTV. Even if the hunters picked up you'd changed to the slow indirect train at Leeds would they think you've done that to get to Knaresborough or would they presume you'd done that so you don't turn up at York when they expect?

 

[Clansman]

Surprised no one this series made it afar as the West Highlands or the Brecon Beacons. Seems like these places are your best bet of evading the "hunters".
Notice how they are always on the move; fair enough, if the program is what it says it is they must be paranoid as....

If it were me I'd hide it out in Corrour with and get the sleeper when travelling down South. Hike back and forth between stations on the West Highland Line to keep your trail as cold as possible, then make the break on the sleeper the night before. Try and pay cash at the counter rather than direct, despite the heavy cost - as the saying goes; "Speculate to Accumulate".

But knowing Channel 4 the terms and conditions probably don't allow immobility, so there's not really any entertainment value in camping out in the one place what so ever.

Never the less I'm glover the moon that Nick won it but I was a bit angry to see Ayo in the final pool of winners, since he was the most arrogant person to enter the show over the 2 years it's aired. The devil in me wanted him to get caught as soon as he phoned them directly.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The hunters would have known all along that Nick's decoy was a fake simply because the production members who were following Nick were not with the decoy.

The programme staff will have known it was a decoy. The hunters won't have known it was a decoy until they got there, but I think Louisa Clarke had cottoned on before the others did.

Try and pay cash at the counter rather than direct, despite the heavy cost - as the saying goes; "Speculate to Accumulate".

I'm almost certain it was the fugitive's camera operator who'd told the programme crew what ticket was bought. There's no way ticket office staff would remember or disclose that information.

It's great telly but the camera operator doing the "CCTV" and the "ANPR" makes it a lot more difficult, and a lot more synthetic.

 

[northwichcat]

The programme staff will have known it was a decoy. The hunters won't have known it was a decoy until they got there, but I think Louisa Clarke had cottoned on before the others did.

I meant the two who had been sent to hunt him down would have known from the moment they arrived on site that he was a decoy due to who was or wasn't filming him.

I'm almost certain it was the fugitive's camera operator who'd told the programme crew what ticket was bought. There's no way ticket office staff would remember or disclose that information.

It's great telly but the camera operator doing the "CCTV" and the "ANPR" makes it a lot more difficult, and a lot more synthetic.

To make it more realistic they should have had someone who stayed near the counter for a few minutes and given HQ a list of destinations where that ticket office clerk had issued tickets to so they then had to try and work out which was the correct one.

I noticed in one instance the camera person had to jump in a 4x4 waiting behind the car the two Yorkshire girls had hitch-hiked in due to them not having a spare seat for the camera person or the driver not wanting to appear on TV.

 

[coxxy]

Last season made me laugh with "CCTV footage" from a Northern 142 taken from a moving CCTV camera near the toilet.. lol

Must admit I did get in to Hunted but series 1 was soooo much better than the second!