Prey vs Predator is savage – Channel 4 has struck gold

The Traitors has both revived reality television and simultaneously killed it.

In the four years since it became the most successful television format in the world, there have been countless attempts to recreate its magic using almost exactly the same ingredients: betrayal, paranoia and people dramatically whispering in corners.

None have come close to matching its might, but it’s become increasingly exhausting watching them fail.

Channel 4’s The Hunt: Prey vs Predator is the first reality series I’ve seen in this tedious post-Traitors era that actually feels like it’s carving out its own lane – harking back to a time before we collectively decided that Claudia Winkleman gliding around a Scottish castle with three cloaked murderers was the absolute peak of British television.

The show has been described as “as savage as The Hunger Games”… minus the slaughter.

Personally, that doesn’t quite do The Hunt justice.

Instead, it feels like a welcome throwback to the golden age of competition TV in the 2010s – blending Phillip Schofield’s one genuinely brilliant contribution to broadcasting, The Cube, with Channel 4’s criminally underrated surveillance thriller Hunted.

Ten players are split into two groups: Prey and Predator.

They’re released into an unforgiving forest spanning four kilometres for a prolonged game of cat and mouse – except the mice occasionally stop to play games for money.

Scattered around the forest are challenges that allow the Prey to add cash to the prize fund.

The catch, naturally, is that one wrong move triggers an alarm that effectively broadcasts their location to the Predators like a woodland distress flare.

The games themselves sound insultingly simple: roll a six on a die three times in six minutes; carry six balloons along a path without them popping.

But simplicity has always been the secret sauce of great competition formats.

Watching grown adults crumble under pressure while attempting what is essentially a birthday party activity is exactly what made The Cube so compulsively watchable.

The same principle applies here – only with the added pressure that failure might result in being hunted down through a forest by strangers.

The Hunt: Prey vs Predator Key Details

What’s the concept?
In a vast forest Predators chase down Prey in a high-stakes, high-tech game of cat-and-mouse, with £100,000 up for grabs.

Who are the contestants?

– Ameer
– Charlotte
– Chloe
– Chris
– Marc
– Mel
– Mia
– Nathan
– Roy
– Shelley
When does it begin?

The Hunt: Prey vs Predator begins on Sunday, 22 March at 9 pm on Channel 4

Speed and agility will get you so far in the battleground, but being likeable proves far more important back at base, where alliances form, and strategies quietly develop.

Be too good in the field, and you’ll quickly find yourself on the chopping block, voted out for the crime of being too competent.

It’s a delicate balancing act: perform like an Olympic athlete in the woods while maintaining the social charm of Pedro Pascal back at camp.

The action in the forest is genuinely high-octane, dripping with adrenaline.

I watched one chase unfold live during a trip to the set in Bulgaria and was completely mesmerised for three hours.

At one point, I screamed and fell off the sofa watching a capture – it was unbelievably thrilling television.

Some chases last for hours, and my only real gripe when watching The Hunt back is that the scale of them doesn’t always translate on screen.

The vastness of the forest, the exhaustion of the players, and the creeping realisation that you’ve essentially signed up to run a half-marathon while being hunted for television doesn’t quite land as powerfully as it should.

Back at base – somewhat contradicting myself – is where The Hunt could do with being a little more Traitors.

Players currently vote rivals off in secret when they absolutely should be banishing them face-to-face.

Where The Hunt excels in action, it’s slightly lacking in explosive drama.

The game-playing is so covert it’s practically begging for a dramatic roundtable.

Still, the golden rule of reality television is that the real magic comes from the cast – ordinary people slowly revealing themselves to be anything but.

And The Hunt has struck gold with Shelley, a 72-year-old model, who’s impressively terrible game, but ironically the best catch in reality television since the golden era of Big Brother.

While everyone else is sprinting through forests and diving into bushes to avoid capture, Shelley often appears to be taking part in a completely different programme.

At one point, as the rest of the cast are gasping for breath after running for miles, the camera cuts to her standing peacefully in the woods.

“I’m just going to hug this tree,” she says.

And she does.

The Hunt has all the makings of something great.

The cast has been perfectly assembled by the producers behind Married At First Sight UK, while the games are devised by the team behind Squid Game: The Challenge.

The premise itself is about as exciting as reality television can get, with the scale to match.

The Hunt: Prey vs Predator Verdict

The Hunt has the potential to be something amazing.

The cast is incredible and the concept exciting.

Still, the show’s biggest challenge will be balancing the fun of the forest with the social politics at the base.

But the show’s biggest challenge is balancing its two worlds: the adrenaline-fuelled chaos of the forest and the social politics back at base.

Right now, neither quite lands with the impact I’m sure it could in the confines of 60-minute episodes with so many competing elements struggling to shine through.

Stick the contestants around a round table and force them to vote each other out face-to-face, and the problem would solve itself instantly.

With a few tweaks to crank up the drama back at base and pack a bigger punch in the chase, The Hunt could easily become the rarest thing in modern reality TV: a genuinely original hit.

And in an era where every new format seems determined to recreate The Traitors, that alone already feels like a victory.

The Hunt: Prey vs Predator begins on March 22 at 9pm on Channel 4.
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