I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! The harsh reality of filming a survival show in a pandemic
Mix Ant and Dec with some ants and bugs, in a faraway Australian jungle, and you get staple British November telly.
Twelve celebrities are brought together for just under a month and tasked with a series of gruesome games called Bushtucker trials in which they play for their campmates’ evening meals.
I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! is notorious for its use of wild critters and shoving multiple celebrities into confined spaces, but many expected it to change this year due to the ongoing pandemic.
However, the only major difference was the Australian jungle set being traded for a more humbling Welsh ground.
Gwrych Castle in North Wales hosted this year’s series with the 12 celebrity contestants isolating themselves for two weeks prior to filming. There were also compulsory coronavirus tests for contestants and hosts every three days.
Staff too have had to be trained to work in such conditions and were fitted with proximity buzzers which go off if individuals are too close to one another. Special regard has had to be taken when approaching the hosts, Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, who have had extremely limited production access to avoid them needing to self-isolate from one another.
Virus safety wasn’t the only obstacle though. Worries arose during airing of the episodes over the use of non-native bugs on Welsh ground with controversy around the effects they may have on the local ecosystem as well as the safety of the creatures themselves.
Marine biologist Nicole Grierson was less critical of the risks. She said: “The bugs that may be released, like cockroaches or mealworms, are at the bottom of the food-web. They are simply food sources for consumers above them.”
But the RSPCA have had “serious concerns” with the show’s treatment and portrayal of animals as objects of entertainment rather than living things.
It noted that particular problems were found with showing living things in a nasty or frightening light because it encourages impressionable audience members to approach animals and insects with the same levels of disregard that they see on TV.
ITV defended the use of the critters claiming that they were collected immediately after filming.
The final of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! saw Giovanna Fletcher crowned Queen of the Jungle.
