CASTAWAY 2000 – SPECIAL PREVIEW

BBC1’s Castaway 2000 has been the TV highlight of the year. A lurid docu-soap tarted-up as a serious sociological experiment, the show has seen a bunch of supposedly normal, everyday people dumped together on a remote Scottish island to “build a society for the new Millennium”. Of course, it hasn’t worked that way, and cameras have been capturing every salacious detail as tempers flare, and the “society” teeters continuously upon the brink of collapse. Here are ten things we can expect from the next batch of episodes…  

1. A bout of extreme weather prevents the delivery of Taransay doctor Roger Stephenson’s favourite biscuits. During a tense public meeting, Roger explains: “When I came into this project, I simply wasn’t made aware that, at some point, events might transpire in such a way as to prevent me getting my biscuits during the allocated window of timescale”. International clothing sales manager Dez Monks tells him to “stop being so fucking selfish”, but Roger pounces on him and, before being restrained by the other castaways, almost succeeds in gouging out Dez’s eyes with his thumbs.

2. The spoons in the kitchen start to disappear in suspicious circumstances. The castaways suspect Scouse driving instructor Trevor Kearan and, in retaliation, trainee psychotherapist Ron Copsey sneaks into Trevor’s pod and does a spunk in his yoghurt.

3. The castaways get a surprise phone call from executive producer Colin Cameron in which Colin explains that it was all a joke and that he is in fact an evil media overlord with good BBC contacts and that the castaways are now actually his own private sex slaves and that his first concubine will be primary school teacher Julie Lowe who he will visit the following day and who will honour his presence by cooking her dog Inca into a special sacrificial casserole.

4. A neighbouring island declares war on Taransay and the castaways are forced to mobilise themselves into a counter-invasionary guerilla force, led by pensions analyst Toby Waterman.

5. A race of feral tramps living on the far North of Taransay are discovered by Posh Ben while walking his dog. After a bizarre 48-hour initiation ceremony of drinking, dancing and ostentatious masturbation, Ben is taken in and worshipped as a God.

6. Lab technician Sandy Colbeck discovers a strange herb on the beach and uses it to distill a powerful potion which she slips into the punch at secretary Tammy Huff’s 28^th birthday party. Guided by hallucinogenic apparitions and chattering, disembodied voices, the castaways snigger and stumble their way to a concealed cave which turns out to be a trans-dimensional portal originally invoked by a pagan race for the purpose of travelling to a parallel astral plane where the unique chemical make-up of the atmosphere enhanced their evolutionary process by a million years in ten minutes. After a lengthy group meeting, the castaways decide against going in.

7. Ex-castaway Ray Bowyer returns with survival trainer Lofty Wiseman, and the two begin picking off the castaways, one by one, by garrotting them in their sleep. Camera operator Tanya Cheedle sets an ingenious trap by concealing a camera in the bedroom of insurance analyst Michael Laird. There’s a happy ending to the saga when Lofty and Ray are unwittingly filmed murdering Michael and are eventually caught and arrested.

8. In a blatant breach of his contract, software salesman Padraig Nallen uses the island’s emergency satellite phone to contact a service called ‘Phillipine Companions’. He apologises, and offers to clean the female castaways’ toilets for a week.

9. University lecturer Peter Jowers is discovered one evening by wife Sheila, working on a bizarre organic structure comprising of secretly stored chicken segments and clumps of his own hair. “I’m making a man, Shelia!” he says. “Only it is to be a man with the added abilities of a bird. Soon he will be able to fly away from this island, carrying me along in his talons!” Peter is soon transferred to an institution for the Emotionally Susceptible on the mainland.

10. The castaways persist in enjoying each other’s company and prove increasingly effective at working together as a team, with nothing at all controversial, confrontational or unexpected happening. In the name of good television, programme-makers Lion TV are forced to airlift a group of five hungry, immensely aggressive brown Kodiak bears onto the island.