The Heat is On (2)
Host
Voiceover: Robert Lindsay
Broadcast
Lion Television for BBC One, 7 August to 2 September 2001 (6 episodes in 1 series)
Synopsis
According to the BFI, "Six-part reality series in which 14 strangers from varied backgrounds strive to prove themselves." They do this by undertaking a survival course in the Scottish Highlands with ex-SAS trainer Lofty Wiseman, then in the second half of the series the best seven are dumped in the Peruvian jungle and challenged to find their way to the arranged extraction point.
The "hook" was that each of the participants was doing it to prove themselves to someone back home who thought (sometimes correctly, as it turns out) they couldn't hack it, and those people back home got to watch and comment on the footage.
Generally seen as a more extreme follow-up to the same company's Castaway 2000 (in case you're struggling to remember, that was the one set on a Scottish island which propelled Ben Fogle to semi-stardom), it was panned by critics and never achieved much ratings-wise either. In retrospect it can be seen as a precursor to the likes of SAS: Are You Tough Enough? and SAS: Who Dares Wins, but primetime BBC One wasn't the place for it.
