Ben Fogle’s New Lives in the Wild

Series one, episode one
Ben Fogle’s recent dalliance with hallucinogenic oblivion confirmed something we’d always suspected. Here was a true psychic voyager, a man whose thirst for enlightenment would never be satisfied by simply presenting colourful items about cheese rolling on ‘Countryfile’ and writing columns for The Daily Telegraph. This new series marks the first step in what will surely become a wild lunge towards the extremes of human potential.

Tonight’s opener sees him travelling to Australia’s Restoration Island to visit David Glasheen, a man who reacted to losing $10 million on the stock market crash of 1987 by retreating to the wilderness. Eventually, we can imagine Fogle doing something similar, before returning, burnished by peyote and isolation, to take his rightful place as the Hunter S Thompson of the green welly set.

For now, though, Ben doesn’t run before he can walk. He confirms that Restoration Island is beautiful. He establishes that Glasheen is a little lonely. And he deduces that, for now, lovely as the island is, he wouldn’t particularly want to live like that. Still, watch this space…