Hunted

This reality show is a game of hide and seek gone high tech. Nine teams of two try to avoid capture by a diverse squad of police and military experts. The teams are married couples, best friends or others with real-life connections. The experts are current or former FBI, Homeland Security, U.S. Marshals, CIA, SWAT, NSA, Navy Seals, British Intelligence...well the list goes on and on. They are dedicated to finding the fugitive teams before 28 days expire. Teams that elude capture win a prize of $250,000.

How real is it? Some scenes are recreated. There are certainly rules beyond those they share with the audience. Some parts of the show feel guided or manufactured. But overall it has a feeling of authenticity, meaning the behaviors of hunters and prey feel true to human nature. Some fugitive teams make elementary errors. Some execute clever plans only to be undone by simple mistakes. Some of the hunters are so driven by ego it might interfere with their decisions.

If nothing else, the show is a primer in modern techniques of surveillance and apprehension. The internet--and everything connected to it--is a huge source of data. But they also use searches, interviews, CCTV, drones, and other methods of profiling and gaining information.

I suspect most viewers will identify with the prey, but some will probably identify with the hunters. Either way, there are moments of anxiety as their paths come close together or even intersect.

This might be considered a guilty pleasure--though not as much as "Cops" which appeals to the baser nature of its viewers. As a contest, it pits amateurs against professionals with years of training and nearly unlimited tools. Still, the odds are that one team, at least, will survive to claim the cash.

When they were first advertising this show I thought it was stupid. I was actually a criminal on the run for 6 years with a husband and 5 kids and there were common sense things that these people do that a real person on the run would not do. But here is my biggest deal: you have camera's following these people then the hunters have cell phone cameras chasing someone, how do they not see the camera man in the same space, then they have strangers giving them spare cars and stuff. People are so scared of violence right now, so I don't think there are as many hitchhiking's happening as much as the show claims it is. Plus as much as people know about cell phones and how they work, or how your parents can find you with one there are just too many mistakes that I really don't think real people would make. I know not everyone is very bright but this show makes you think almost every person is dumb. Then to win you have to sign into a website to get your get away plane... a site that is being watched by the hunters. All of you that thought you could get pointers on how to stay on the run, there is nothing to see here folks

This is a reality TV competition. Nine teams of two regular people are tasked to avoid the group of highly trained investigators hunting for them. They are given an hour head start as they set off to escape detection for 28 days before retrieving the $250,000 prize. The investigators use modern computer and tracking technologies as they dig through the competitors' real and internet life.

It's an interesting show. There are interesting detection techniques. There are interesting contestants. The potential is there for good reality TV. The show does need to explain the rules of the game much better. There are definitely rules but the viewer is forced to piece it all together. How much money can they withdraw from the banks? What kind of preparations can they do? The contestants obviously have camera crews following them. So this is an edited competition with murky rules. I hope that this is not fake. It does need to clarify its scenario. For example, the finale has the contestants picking up the money from a bank and running on foot to a plane. It's an interesting visual but I kept wondering what happened to their rides. It could have been an easy fix if the money comes with instructions to run to the plane. It would have been more dramatic and more logical. This show needs to clean up some of these loose threads.

Fantastic reality TV, there should be more like this!

It feels insulting that the dictators of this show consider the general public so oblivious to buy into this, too many errors that give away that the show is staged and fake. There is just nothing 'reality' about it, when the so called contestants who have a good chance of winning, are being forced by the movie makers to make supportable mistakes that they would have never made if the decision was actually left up to them. for example, a women offers the 2 hunted guys her kayak and they agree that it is a great idea, then somehow the detectives find old google searches where these guys looked up kayaks and fully concentrate on searching for a kayak on a lake even with a helicopter, although the idea just came up and they could not have know anything about it. the next part are 2 girls who successfully hide out for 2 weeks and knowing about all the cameras they suddenly decide to go on a camera infested highway to expose them self to a Tacco Bell camera, and if that's not fake enough they now decide to eat their Tacco's in the parking lot just waiting until the hunters get them. OMG