Reality television and the politics of mass surveillance in channel 4’s Hunted

Abstract

This paper is interested in representations of mass surveillance in Hunted, Channel 4’s reality tv series in which ‘ordinary British citizens’ roleplay as ‘fugitives’ that must evade surveillance and capture by ‘the state.’ Here contentious powers of state surveillance are mitigated by (a) the programme’s deployment of a myth of surveillance ‘symmetry’ and a ‘fugitive fantasy’ that obfuscate the racial politics of ‘being watched’ in a post-9/11 climate; (b) personal stories of contestants or ‘fugitives’ that enable a ‘therapeutic self’ that situates the mass surveillance experience as productive and transformative; and (c) the ‘gamification’ of surveillance itself.

As sociologists, literary critics, and communication scholars have widely observed, popular culture has long been fascinated by the practices, subjects, and objects of surveillance (Nellis, 2009; Wise, 2016; Zimmer, 2015). For some, ‘the field of surveillance studies is perhaps influenced as much by literature and film as it is by social theory’ such that popular culture offers ‘a route to critical analyses’ (Monahan and Murakami Wood, 2018: 377). On the one hand, classic and contemporary novels like We (1924), Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Running Wild (1988) and The Circle (2013), as well as Hollywood films like Rear Window (1954), The Conversation (1974), Enemy of the State (1998), Minority Report (2002) and Code 46 (2003) have contemplated the unequal power relations at the heart of disciplinary regimes and systems of surveillance. Such artefacts of popular culture offer dystopian warnings or cautionary tales of total transparency and endless observation of citizens and subjects, illustrating what David Barnard-Wills (following Deleuze and Guattari) calls a ‘surveillant assemblage of enunciation’ (2011: 550). More recently, television dramas like Black Mirror (2011–2019), Omniscient (2020), Devs (2020), The Capture (2020) and Next (2020) have interrogated the sweeping powers of corporate and government monitoring through smart devices and the surveillance practices of a control society. Each programme was sensitive to the ways in which the present and future political economy of communication technology promises greater infringements on personal and collective freedom.

On the other hand, reality television series like The Real World (1992–2019) and Big Brother (2000-present) have encouraged participants and audiences to not only surrender to a purportedly benevolent and watchful eye of video surveillance but, moreover, embrace expansive observation as an opportunity to construct and monetise individual identity. Indeed, reality television is saturated with programmes that ‘dramatise and embody the collapse of any meaningful distinction between notions of the self and capitalist processes of production’ enabled by media surveillance (Hearn, 2006: 137). Recent reality television fare like The Circle (2020) and Too Hot to Handle (2020), however, not only underscored the interdictions of 24-hour surveillance; they also anticipated the lockdown protocols and quarantines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas The Circle relied on contestants’ social media skills to ‘catfish’ one another while sequestered alone in an apartment building, Too Hot to Handle used an Alexa-like Artificial Intelligence system called ‘Lana’ to police the sexual behaviour of randy twentysomething singles in a tropical paradise. Though these programmes were hardly prophetic or insightful, Too Hot to Handle explicitly posited surveillance as an encroachment on personal autonomy, if only at a starkly libidinal level.

This antagonism to surveillance in reality television, however, is perhaps most pronounced in Hunted, an adventure series that debuted on Britain’s Channel 4 in 2015. In each of the five seasons of Hunted, British citizens go on the run in the UK for nearly 1 month while being pursued by retired law enforcement agents with access to the latest surveillance technologies, from closed-circuit television (CCTV) and cell-site data monitoring to call tracing and automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR). Here the invasive gaze of surveillance is not only blatantly obvious but also readily positioned as a barrier to overcome for contestants to succeed. The objective of the ‘game’ is to evade capture by ‘the authorities’ or hunters. Given its premise, which resembles a twisted form of The Amazing Race (2001-present) in which contestants wander the shires searching for a designated extraction point, Hunted is an unequivocal artefact of ‘surveillance entertainment’; whereas observation and behaviour modification are methods and effects of reality television writ large, they become the entire plot of Hunted. For this reason, the series is both inquisitive and instructive, informing viewers of the latest monitoring technologies and encouraging us to contemplate surveillance politics and state control (but in highly circumscribed ways).

The various messages about mass surveillance in Hunted can be teased out by using a textual analysis, one that identifies and interrogates the narrative details and plotlines of the series within an historical moment rich with public debates on surveillance. In doing so, several important themes emerge. Firstly, Hunted deploys a myth of surveillance as ‘symmetrical’, a great equaliser applied indiscriminately to all persons regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and socioeconomic class (Hall, 2015). This particular myth is supported by the programme’s use of a ‘fugitive fantasy’ wherein mostly (but not exclusively) white contestants roleplay with the high stakes of police pursuit as imaginary suspects, a civilian category overwhelmingly racialised in a discourse of terrorism from which the series draws. Secondly, Hunted encourages viewers to empathise with the fugitives by offering detailed backstories that personalise the contestants (rather than the hunters) and enable the disclosure of the ‘therapeutic self’ (Dubrofsky, 2007). Throughout the competition, the experience of attempting to escape surveillance is presented as transformative, teaching the contestants valuable life lessons far removed from violated privacy and invasive monitoring. Finally, the series embraces a ‘gamedoc’ format—a non-fiction storyline of contrived competition—that encourages minor disruptions to government monitoring but without inviting larger criticism of mass surveillance, which is pitched as an individual challenge rather than a systemic problem.

Surveillance and reality television

Film and television programmes about surveillance, Catherine Zimmer suggests, ‘should be viewed not just as “reflections” of an increasingly surveillance-centred media, but themselves as practices of surveillance’ (Zimmer, 2011: 439). In other words, surveillance appears onscreen as a narrative subject and plot device as well as a technique of cinematography. Such remarks are redolent of Joshua Meyrowitz’s claim that the introduction of television in general ‘cultivated its audiences into the “normalcy” of people watching other people closely—yet anonymously and from afar’ (Meyrowitz, 2009: 36). While Meyrowitz was interested in television as a medium that inoculated mass audiences for increased state and corporate surveillance under late capitalism, his comments are particularly relevant to reality television, a genre defined by a set of unique conventions, formatting and economic structures that include ‘unscripted’ content, freelance labour, and a cinema verité style. Given the vertiginous array of reality television programmes and reality themes—from lifestyle consumption and dating, manual labour and body makeovers to crime solving, cooking competitions and home improvements—academic research on the television genre is suitably robust. While appreciating the expansive scholarship on the subject and its various formats, the sketch of reality television that follows is decidedly concise but strategic, limited to identifying some well-documented themes in related programmes that best foreground an analysis of Hunted and its assorted problems.

Most importantly for the purposes of this paper, reality television and its mass popularity intersect with wider discussions of surveillance under late capitalism (see Andrejevic, 2003; Couldry, 2008; Palmer, 2002). In many ways, constant monitoring is the sine qua non of the genre at the level of not only technical style but also narrative themes. The long-running Candid Camera (1948–1992), for instance, was one of the first programmes to engage and toy with mass surveillance, sublimating Cold War paranoia of the 1950s. As Bradley Clissold explains, ‘by converting recorded invasions of privacy into shared moments of entertainment fully endorsed (retrospectively at least) by the surveilled, [the series] helped reduce [the] audience’s surveillance-anxiety’ in light of the Red Scare (Clissold, 2004: 33). Similarly, Crimewatch UK (1984–2017) relied on CCTV in its narrative and debuted at a time when the surveillance technology was relatively new and received widespread public suspicion. In her discussion of the BBC One series, Deborah Jermyn suggests that ‘the spectacle and promise of CCTV material is indeed one of the fundamental allures of crime-appeal programming for its audience’ inasmuch as it renders criminals increasingly visible (2004: 73). Like crime-themed reality television in the US, Crimewatch UK encouraged ‘citizen surveillance and reporting’ that ‘redistribute the state’s control wider and deeper into society’ (Cavender, 1998: 79). Hidden surveillance was not only integral to each series; it was also a collective activity in which audiences could partake, foreshadowing some of the participatory effects of reality television in the subsequent decades.

Though the genre was born of the deregulation of broadcasting in North America and Europe in the late 1980s, which resulted in a deluge of cable television networks jockeying for attention of a fragmented audience and desperate to cut labour costs, reality television surged in popularity and formats during the late 1990s and early 2000s (Raphael, 2004). This watershed of reality programming was both symptomatic and constitutive of dramatically shifting public perceptions of surveillance. Once a feared appendage of a totalitarian state, Mark Andrejevic (2013) observes, surveillance became increasingly depicted as less dominating than empowering, offering heretofore passive viewers the opportunity to participate in the creative process of television production. As Gareth Palmer points out, reality television’s reliance on CCTV cameras represents ‘an extension of urban life [in which] a viewer-society imprecisely monitored by unseen others is one that has already infiltrated consciousness as a rather fuzzy benign source for good’ (Palmer, 2002: 299). For example, programmes like Big BrotherThe Real World and Extreme Makeover (2002–2007) worked to ‘define a particular form of subjectivity consonant with an emerging online economy: one that equates submission to surveillance with self-expression and self-knowledge’ (Andrejevic, 2003: 97). The same public disclosure of personal tastes and preferences upon which consumer tracking and bespoke advertising thrive is framed as self-articulation of an ‘authentic’ identity in reality television. In addition, participants and contestants are subjected to constant video surveillance through which they apparently learn about themselves and their potential, illustrating ‘the therapeutic self’, as mentioned earlier; cast members are compelled to embark on introspective journeys documented by multiple video cameras rather than question the invasiveness of the programmes’ surveillance.

Whereas the ‘therapeutic self’ is enabled by constant monitoring across various subgenres of reality television, it is used in Hunted to sublimate paratextual critiques of surveillance that might include systemic problems of violated privacy and interdictions on democratic institutions. In this sense, Hunted includes each of the above themes to offer selective messages about surveillance not unlike Candid Camera and Crimewatch UK. Unlike other reality television programmes, however, Hunted openly encourages the audience to question mass surveillance but only within the rules and boundaries of a gamedoc format that prioritises individual competition. What unfolds, then, is a trove of narrative contradictions that offer audiences competing viewing positions in relation to the state, surveillance societies, and reality television.

Lessons and limitations of Hunted as pedagogy of mass surveillance

Hunted appears at a particular historical and political juncture rife with controversies and contestations over mass surveillance in the UK. For instance, the series premiered shortly after the passing of the Data Protection and Investigatory Powers Act in the UK 2014, which aimed to restore ‘bulk data retention’ of private communications after the Data Retention Directive of 2006 was overturned by the European Court of Justice 2 years earlier. Hunted also aired during the Royal Assent of the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which granted authorities the ability to intercept communications beyond the UK’s borders through ‘extra-territoriality provisions’, so much so that privacy advocates dubbed the act a ‘snoopers’ charter’ (Cropper, 2017: 4). During the same period of broadcasting, Human Rights Watch filed a formal complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal over surveillance practices in the UK, which apparently offered no substantive safeguards to protect privacy and aimed to share gathered information with the National Security Agency in the US. And in 2018, during Season Three of Hunted, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK’s surveillance regime ‘violated human rights to privacy and to freedom of expression’ and was ‘incapable of limiting interference into individuals’ private lives’ (Ruiz, 2018: 12, 3). As the culmination of a five-year legal battle, the court was especially alarmed by ‘the entire selection process for what data the government collects, keeps, and sees, and the government’s unrestricted access to metadata’ (Ruiz, 2018: 13). Evidently, Hunted tapped into timely subject matter with widespread implications for citizens under surveillance in the UK, a theme that reverberated across popular culture at the time.

Indeed, Hunted can be located within a tapestry of surveillance television in the UK, from docudramas like Criminals: Caught on Camera (2013–2015) to various fictional programmes like The Capture and Viewpoint (2021). Fictional programming often overlaps with larger political discourses on surveillance. For instance, Channel 4’s political thriller Secret State (2012) was released the same year as the Protection of Freedoms Act in which wiretapping by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is a fulcrum of the plot. Similar themes of state surveillance were exposed in Season Two of BBC’s The Field of Blood (2011–2013), a fictional drama based on the novels of Denise Mina set in Glasgow of the early 1980s as GCHQ partook in illegal wiretapping of the local miners’ union. Hunted also appeared during the second season of Prey (2014–2015), another British serial drama on ITV that utilised a pursuit narrative in which innocent characters (usually members of law enforcement) wrongly accused of heinous crimes must evade surveillance and capture by police. As a ‘surveillant assemblage of enunciation’, Hunted, Secret State, The Field of Blood and Prey give casual viewers an impression that surveillance technologies like CCTV and wiretapping are not only ubiquitous and ultimately inescapable in Britain; they are also indispensable to apprehending suspects regardless of guilt. Such a narrative lies at the heart of Hunted, particularly in the first season.

The premise

Polemics around surveillance and privacy are most explicit in Season One of Hunted. In the first moments of each episode, the screen is bombarded by an audiovisual jumble that includes news footage of hooded looters, carnage of public transit (presumably from the 7 July 2005, London bombings), burning buildings and horse-mounted riot police, all linked by a chaotic soundtrack of sirens and an ominous drumbeat. A voice asks the audience, ‘What is the balance between liberty and security?’ The screen then shifts to archival footage of former British Prime Minster David Cameron explaining that ‘this sort of data is absolutely vital in stopping some of the most serious terrorist incidents in our country.’ Another voice interjects that the public ‘may not be convinced that this massive infringement on privacy is a price worth paying.’ Finally, the first season’s resident narrator (Eddie Marsan) introduces the series:

Britain, 2015: One of the most watched nations on earth. In a country where everything we do leaves a trail, 14 ordinary citizens are going on the run…British citizens are now fugitives. Hunting them down are 30 of the world’s most successful investigators. 28 days, 14 fugitives. If you had to disappear, what would you do?

From the outset, then, Hunted is pitched as a reality television gamedoc but one with lofty political stakes; its central backdrop is not only widespread debates over information privacy (until Season 2, at least) but also the purported prevention of future terror attacks in the UK, which the series suggests are unspecified but violent and imminent. In other words, Hunted participates in the ‘production and maintenance of the culture of risk’, even as it operates as a genre of reality television entertainment (Hall, 2015: 3). The opening of each episode then concludes with a text disclaimer that ‘some of the powers of the state have been replicated including CCTV and ANPR.’ With various backgrounds in counterterrorism, police and military intelligence, the hunters are a clear proxy for the state and, for dramatic purposes, utilise the powers thereof.

The hunters enjoy sweeping access to a wide range of data collection technology and surveillance techniques that include CCTV, ANPR, drone tracking, confiscating computer hard drives and laptops, house searches (or raids), interviews with friends and families of fugitives, retrieval of bank records, cell-site tower locating and call tracing. To help flee this elaborate web of surveillance, fugitives typically compete in pairs (comprised of friends, coworkers or kin) and are given a prepaid ATM card with £450 to cover the expenses of a possible 28-days adventure (restricted to the UK). Of course, the hunters’ objective is to prevent fugitives from reaching an extraction point and, from Season Two onwards, winning £100,000. Over five seasons and 53 contestants, there have been 14 winners (the hunters apprehended all fugitives in Season Four). Throughout the series, contentious powers of state surveillance are mitigated by the programme’s deployment of three key themes: surveillance ‘symmetry’, which is bolstered by a ‘fugitive fantasy’ embraced by contestants; a ‘therapeutic self’ enabled by transformative stories of fugitives rather than hunters; and the ‘gamification’ of surveillance itself.

Surveillance ‘symmetry’ and the ‘fugitive fantasy’

The first theme in which state surveillance is mitigated in Hunted is the depiction of systematic monitoring as automatically ‘symmetrical’, as equally distributed and applied across individuals and communities. Troves of information on the contestants—from social media profiles and banking activities to automobile registration, work history and family connections—are readily available to the hunters and mobilised at a moment’s notice, that is, when ‘ordinary British citizens’ become mock fugitives. Although the cast of the series is modestly multicultural with racialised characters appearing in each season, all contestants are subjected to nearly identical data sweeps that include confiscation of home computers, interrogations of family members, CCTV monitoring and social media infiltration. Here invasive surveillance is presented as a great equaliser among contestants and even supported by some fugitives. As Harinder explains in Season One, ‘If we go on the run and they can’t catch us, what chance do they have to keep us safe?’ For some fugitives, surveillance is clearly synonymous with the management of risk and national security. This is reiterated in the final moments of the same season when lead hunter Brett Lovegrove warns, ‘The state isn’t perfect. It’s a very complex machine. That machine is working continuously to keep our society safe. All the time. It never stops. It never will.’ Viewers are repeatedly reminded of the stakes of surveillance and public safety and encouraged to recognise monitoring by the state as indisputable and ultimately egalitarian; surveillance data exist on everyone and can be ‘judiciously’ activated when an individual or group is deemed a ‘threat.’

However, as Rachel Hall notes of global travel in the post-9/11era, ‘the symbolic burden of embodying the terrorist threat is not born evenly by all’, including the fugitives of Hunted (Hall, 2015: 90). In The Transparent Traveler, she outlines how international airport authorities now require and reward passengers’ docility, submission to surveillance, and cultural performance of ‘innocence’ as a new form of ‘whiteness.’ Conversely, Hall also describes an ‘asymmetrical transparency’ wherein the politics of visibility are applied ‘unevenly … across bodies and contexts’ such that racialised bodies and the ‘immigrant Other’ are rendered increasingly suspicious and ‘irredeemably opaque’ by government agencies and a paranoid public (Hall, 2015: 157). Although Hunted toes the state line of surveillance as a robust system of observation applied equally across populations, the programme’s contestants sometimes suggest otherwise, that perpetual monitoring is, in fact, asymmetrical. This is readily apparent in the pursuit of the Singh brothers of Season One. Appearing in only one episode in which they are introduced then captured, Davinder and Harinder Singh are particularly outspoken about the problems of racial profiling in the post-9/11 political climate. Whereas the hunters worry of the brothers’ ability to blend in amongst the Sikh community in Leicester, where we are told their names are as common as ‘John Smith’, the fugitives are less optimistic of their subterfuge across Britain. Early in the chase, Davinder exclaims, ‘We’re Asian. We’ve got beards and we’re carrying rucksacks…. The automatic thing people are going to think are: bloody hell, terrorists.’ The Singh brothers, in other words, illustrate ‘asymmetrical transparency’ in the global politics of travel and how their own racialised identities may draw immediate suspicion among the general public in the UK even as the hunters are reticent of racial profiling by the state (Hall, 2015: 157). Later in the episode, the brothers board a transit bus where Davinder turns to a white, tattooed, and bearded passenger and explains how:

Society frowns upon anyone that’s a bit different. You have to be cautious nowadays. Since 9/11 there’s been more focus on Asians. I’m the guy that walks through the airport and I guarantee you I’m the guy that gets questioned, pulled aside, legs apart, shoes off, and searched. It’s not acceptable in today’s society to be judged by the way you look, dress, talk. I just think it’s wrong; we’re better than that.

After hunters visit a local pub to distribute photographs of the Singhs, one patron asks, ‘Are these bad boys? Has it got something to do with ISIS?’, then adds some inaudible mutterings about ‘beheadings.’ Dramatic as it may be, such public vitriol is never directed at white fugitives and illustrates what Simone Browne calls the ‘racial baggage’ of global travel (Browne, 2015: 132). While the hunters do not actively encourage Islamophobic sentiment at the local pub (and include a Muslim analyst, Aisha, at intelligence headquarters), they do not clarify the Singh’s Sikh background; instead, they maintain rather preposterously that ‘there is a viable danger here.’

Conversely, other contestants are well aware of their ability to blend in and utilise perceived transparency to their advantage. Anna and Elizabeth in Season Two, for example, believe their unassuming identities will help them avoid unwanted attention and may even garner support along the way. Elizabeth explains that ‘members of the public are more likely to help out … girls our age.’ Anna adds that they are simply ‘two smiley young girls.’ What passes unmentioned, however, is the implicit white privilege of the pair, the ‘unmarked’ identities that allow them to avoid suspicion across the British shires and towns. Elsewhere in Season Two, white ‘househusband’ and solo fugitive Nick believes his ‘politeness’ and respectability are strategic assets, and he is described by hunters as a ‘stereotypical grey man: someone that doesn’t stand out when he moves across the country.’ As the hunters predictably avoid discussions of ‘asymmetrical transparency’, white competitors have an inherent strategic advantage in the series. This becomes relatively obvious when the Singh brothers use decoy emails to lure ‘the authorities’ to Caister-on-Sea which, for the hunters, ‘doesn’t seem like a place they would blend in very well.’ The resort town’s racial homogeneity may prevent the South Asian brothers from finding reliable cover. As Davinder’s commentary suggests, ‘mobility for some [is achieved] at the expense of others’ (Hall, 2015: 165).

Alongside and against this perceived invisibility of whiteness, most of the contestants embrace an identity of an imagined outsider or a ‘fugitive fantasy.’ Repeated references to Bonnie and Clyde as well as Thelma and Louise, for example, are romanticised shorthand for outlawed adventures and hijinks. Emily, a business owner and fugitive in Season One, explains how she and Laura (an interior decorator and co-fugitive) ‘used to fantasise about running away’ and how she wants to ‘have that time again where we go on adventures … like Thelma and Louise.’ She aims to ‘be free, be on the run’ and explains how ‘sometimes “timeout” from reality is really welcome.’ Fellow fugitive and physician Ricky describes himself as a ‘decent bloke’ with a ‘middle-class set up’ but also ‘a maverick’, which he attributes to his bank-robbing uncle. Similarly, in Season Four, youth worker and former convict Nicholas remarks, ‘I’d like to see myself as Public Enemy Number One, some sort of Robin Hood.’ In the same season, neonatal nurse Emma ‘wants to prove that sweet, innocent nurses can be badasses.’ And former Royal Marine and fugitive Matthew enjoys ‘being in dangerous situations’ and finds ‘everyday life to be pretty monotonous.’ While the adventure aspect of the series overlaps with the gamification of surveillance discussed below, it also speaks to the consistent ways in which white contestants find a thrilling escape from the purported banalities of simply being white and middle class. For many of the white contestants, the adventure could be taken as a momentary departure from tacit racial and socioeconomic privilege, which simply returns as an ability to blend in or avoid public suspicion. This is not to suggest that racialised contestants in Hunted find no excitement in being pursued by the hunters; Ayo, a black software developer and fugitive in Season Three, for instance, believes he has found a ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to basically be Jack Bauer.’ The perceived escape from normalcy and routine, however, is most often expressed by white fugitives in the series.

Basically, the ‘fugitive fantasy’ works to curtail a wider critique of state surveillance by the contestants and potentially the audience. On the one hand, it allows mostly (but not exclusively) white contestants to romanticise danger by temporarily embodying an otherwise unenviable and precarious status of ‘criminal’ or (considering the dramatic openings of the series) a potential terrorist, a category with explicitly racialised meanings in a post-9/11 context. In doing so, the series obfuscates how ‘varying degrees of transparency and opacity are asymmetrically ascribed to different populations’ (Hall, 2015: 165). As these contestants slip between a white privilege that optimises their mobility and an imaginary (racialised) status of ‘fugitive’ or ‘terrorist’ on the run, viewers are discouraged from realising how state surveillance is intentionally concentrated in specific communities based on race, gender, class, and religious affiliation, for instance. On the other hand, the fugitive fantasy distracts viewers from relatively quotidian but no less contentious data collection practices within and beyond the programme. Despite the hunters’ repeated boasting of surveillance capabilities directed at a naïve public, in Hunted privacy is apparently only ‘invaded’ when one becomes a ‘fugitive.’ The widespread personal data collected surreptitiously but in the purported interest of national security are made to appear dormant and innocuous until activated by law enforcement. As such, the series provides a rejoinder to privacy advocates critical of state powers and mass surveillance in and across the UK at the time of Hunted’s release. If surveillance in Hunted is both rationalised and strategically tempered, however, it becomes something else entirely when the series incorporates details of contestants’ personal lives into focused narratives of the ‘therapeutic self.’ In Hunted, surveillance is made to appear positively transformative.

The ‘therapeutic self’

The most glaring irony of Hunted, of course, is that contestants are always filmed by camera operators assigned to them by a series bent on testing the evasion of surveillance. Even if they win, fugitives are never really ‘off the grid’ since they are perpetually monitored by viewers, a reality that immediately belies the basic premise of the series: to escape both surveillance and capture. Evidently, some moderate suspension of disbelief is required from the audience since a reality television series without video footage of participants would be difficult to imagine and even more difficult to watch. To this end, the fugitives are obligated to participate in ‘voluntary transparency’ which may, as Hall suggests, inoculate global travellers for increased surveillance and security practices but it also provides viewers with a rich tableau of personal details about each contestant, without which a ‘therapeutic self’ could not emerge (2015: 20).

The connection between television, therapy, and social identities is historically well established and not limited to reality subgenres. As Mimi White explains, ‘insofar as therapy, confession, and therapeutic relations figure as pervasive influences on prime-time television in general … it becomes necessary to recognise their broad social efficacy’ (White, 1992: 171). Specifically, reality television’s commodification of authenticity through self-disclosure enables ‘the therapeutic self’, which Dubrofsky (drawing on Andrejevic) vividly traces in The Bachelor (2002-present) and The Bachelorette (2003-present) series. In such programmes, contestants ‘become knowable to others and to themselves through the use of the technology of surveillance to confess the self, which performs a therapeutic good’ (Dubrofsky, 2007: 273). To improve their chances of winning a lover and life-partner, contestants often reflect on processes of self-improvement documented by video cameras as the confessional segments of the series, a contractual obligation of cast members in the genre. Here, as in other reality television series like Big Brother, for instance, ‘self-knowledge can strengthen viewer empathy, while “self-ignorance” (along with its partner, overconfidence) holds, as ever, its classic potential for comic effect’ (Corner, 2002: 261). However, as Dubrofsky suggests, ‘therapeutic discourse encourages individuals to focus on changing the self rather than cast a critical eye on larger social structures’ (Dubrofsky, 2007: 268).

In Hunted, the ‘therapeutic self’ and its depoliticising tendencies are expressed in family relations, which are prioritised and seem to grow stronger as time on the run grows longer. In Season One, for instance, we follow Emily, who is repeatedly preoccupied by the wellbeing of her son ‘in the back of my mind, driving me on’; Davinder claims to ‘want to make my mother proud’, displays to viewers a ‘Mi Familia’ back tattoo and adds, ‘I’ll always have my family’s back’; and Ricky expresses concern for his homelife, which he feels is compromised by mass surveillance:

My family are [sic] everything to me. The surveillance state will be a threat to the way that they live and quality of life in the years to come. I’m doing this because the powers of the state frighten me and I want to prove to myself that I can beat them.

In Season Two, we follow office administrator and fugitive Anna, who is determined to win the prize money to help her mother ‘put a deposit down on a house’; we meet self-described ‘househusband’ Nick, for whom ‘winning will mean [bringing] value to the family.’ In Season Three, we follow electrician and fugitive Bob, whose motivation is to improve his autistic son’s self-confidence and ‘get to know him better.’ In Season Four, personal banker and fugitive Laura is driven by the prize money to fund costly treatments for her mother’s agoraphobia. In the same season, Mathew is ‘on the run to provide for [his] family’, later proclaiming that ‘it’s me and my family against the hunters.’ Of course, the hunters are privy to these family backstories and explain how a focus on children, for instance, is a ‘major vulnerability’ for some fugitives.

As contestants attempt to evade state surveillance, they invariably undergo some form of self-discovery but only after they endure the requisite anxiety of being under constant monitoring. Initially, many contestants reflect on the paranoia of being endlessly tracked by the hunters. In Season One, Laura explains how ‘being Hunted is not a nice feeling. It’s a real mental mind game [with] so many new shades of fear.’ In Season Three, Joseph describes the experience of being on the run as ‘the hardest thing in my life.’ In Season Four, Nicholas notes the ‘constant stress’ of being on the run and how he has ‘never, ever, ever experienced anything like it’; Mathew describes how he feels ‘so out of control, so vulnerable’; Loren exclaims, ‘The mental side is harder than I imagined; I’m worn down.’ Although such adverse experiences should inspire moments of reflection on the powers of the state and invasions of privacy, they are more often used to establish the stakes of the game and the psychological hurdles that contestants must overcome. The undesirable effects of mass surveillance are clearly present in the series, but they are swiftly subsumed by narratives of self-discovery.

Having struggled against ‘the state’, contestants often experience moments of affirmation or transformation, all of which illustrate a ‘therapeutic self.’ In Season One, for example, Emily describes a ‘huge sense of achievement’ in partaking in the gamedoc; Lauren claims that ‘going on the run has given me a good kick up the ass to get on with life.’ At the end of Season Two, Ayo notes how the adventure ‘has given me confidence. When things get a little bit hard, I know that I can keep going. [It’s] one of the best things I’ve ever done’; co-winner Nick feels vindicated by the competition as newfound ‘value’ to his family: ‘I did that being me, just a househusband.’ In Season Three, Alex finds the challenge an ‘incredible opportunity to prove to myself that I am capable, I am worthwhile, and I do have purpose.’ His father proudly admits how he has ‘learned more about Alex in the last 2 weeks than in the last 10 years. It’s been a real privilege to get to know my lad.’ Alex adds, ‘I’m loving this new me now; it’s opened my eyes to the possibilities of where my life can go.’ Evidently, Ricky’s outrage over privacy violations and mass surveillance in Season One is eclipsed by repeated outcomes of self-discovery made by contestants throughout the series.

The ‘therapeutic self’ that emerges in Hunted is such that individual achievement, personal growth and family commitment are celebrated in ways that divert attention from the social problems of surveillance, increased paranoia, and anxiety as well as the abuse of state power hinted at in the first season of the series. Like other reality television programmes, ‘this approach provides a legitimate rationale for the individual to ‘work through’ personal issues rather than looking at the material circumstances in which governance takes place’ (Palmer, 2002: 302). In each of these storylines, the experience of evading surveillance seems both transformative and life affirming rather than an infringement on their personal lives and free expression in civil society. In response, viewers are persuaded to downgrade any perceived illegitimacy of mass surveillance, total observation, and privacy violations in Hunted. This is because the mass surveillance experience is presented in the series as a positive and productive phenomenon, without which contestants would apparently learn little of themselves and their life potential. Against a backdrop of widespread debates on privacy and state surveillance, the ‘therapeutic self’ in Hunted becomes a red herring of sorts, a duplicitous though emotionally rewarding storyline that minimises the polemic of surveillance introduced by the series. But it may also encourage viewers to cheer against the state, especially in the gamedoc format.

The ‘gamification’ of surveillance

Although Hunted relies on mass surveillance and potential privacy violations as a preamble, it is explicitly an adventure reality series and gamedoc, a documentary-style programme defined by explicit rules, competitions and often prizes. As Nick Couldry claims, each gamedoc ‘has a specific myth about how it represents the social world’ (Couldry, 2008: 63). In Hunted, social and political issues of ‘asymmetrical transparency’ and contentious data collection are subsumed by the gamedoc where individuals (or pairs) are pitted against the hunters in an intense contest of what one fugitive calls ‘adult hide and seek.’ Herein lies what Jennifer Whitson calls the ‘gamification’ of surveillance in which ‘play is applied to non-play spaces’ and ‘enrolls people into self-governance by using their highest aspirations and capacities, that of self-care and self-development’ (Whitson, 2013: 163, 170). To deal with paranoia and fear, fugitives typically learn to adapt to widespread surveillance and play within the rules of the game to outwit the hunters. To this end, fugitives often wear disguises, send decoy communications with loved ones, use aliases to post on social media, and switch transport vehicles or simply hitchhike. Using such tactics of evasion, fugitives describe the experience as an ‘adventure’, a ‘thrilling escape’ and a ‘continuum of a night out.’

Through various acts of play among the fugitives, mass surveillance is rendered less an invasion of privacy and infringement on freedom of expression and movement than a source of ludic enjoyment, one that is far from intimidating despite the stern roleplaying by the hunters. As contestants embrace the alleged ‘freedom of travel’ and taunt the hunters, fleeing the state is made to appear nothing short of amusing! In Season One, Lauren visits a town fete and has her face painted as a sad clown as part of her disguise and public relations managers Adam and Emma send the hunters a postcard with a photo of a flock of sheep and drink champagne while attending a cricket match at Lord’s in London. As Adam explains, ‘It’s quite exciting playing with fire; we wanted to provoke the hunters and stick two fingers up at them. If they found out we went to watch cricket for the day, I think it would be quite funny.’ Hunters are routinely subjected to casual insults and taunting from contestants. In Season Three, Deputy Mayor of Sheffield and fugitive Magid mails the hunters a letter written in Somali, which apparently calls the trackers ‘large cups of tea.’ In Season Four, Mathew sends the hunters a t-shirt that reads, ‘Catch me if you can!’ While all of the above fugitives are ultimately captured, their tactics illustrate how a gamedoc format and some of its players present and perceive surveillance and powers of the state as enjoyable and without serious political and legal consequences.

Evidently, the gamedoc storylines in Hunted are typically more favourable to the opponents of the state than its agents, a trend that complicates any ringing endorsement of mass surveillance and authority in the series. For instance, personal details of the contestants that inform the ‘therapeutic self’ are also used to establish a longshot trope, one that routinely situates fugitives as decidedly disadvantaged underdogs competing against highly trained hunters and the state. In Season One, for instance, heating engineer and fugitive Stephen routinely derides himself as ‘only a plumber from Walsall.’ His friend and co-fugitive, Martin, adds that ‘It’s a nice idea, this bloke from Walsall whose just an IT manager at 10 a penny trying to take on the state.’ In the same season, NHS support worker and fugitive Adam notes how he was ‘the only gay in the village’ while growing up impoverished and frequently homeless with his family. In Season Two, Ayo explains how he and co-fugitive Madu met in a school library since their parents were ‘too poor’ to afford home computers; Anna reflects on how she was a ‘doormat’ when she was younger, one that ‘got bullied quite a lot’; military veterans and fugitives Kirk and Jeremy identify as amputees and describe the problem of ‘phantom pain’ in lost limbs, which tugs at the heartstrings of one hunter whose husband is a ‘fellow limbless veteran.’ In Season Three, singer and fugitive Dan describes ‘growing up on a council estate [with] very little opportunities thrown in front of us.’ In the same season, Alex speaks of being bullied for his autism and his difficulty maintaining friendships. Finally, in Season Four, architecture technologist Ismail remarks how he ‘had a pretty tough time at school. I was short, chubby with the afro, bullied for about 2 years. It still affects me now [as] social anxiety.’ While not all contestants are equally ‘disadvantaged’, an underdog narrative consistently invites viewers to align with, as some fugitives suggest, ‘David against Goliath.’

Because of these personal details that inform a ‘longshot trope’ where ‘average’ and unremarkable people prevail over extraordinary circumstances if not their competitors, ‘ordinary’ contestants become personalised in a way not openly extended to the hunters, who remain relatively anonymous and interchangeable other than passing references to employment history. Viewers are asked to empathise with fugitives as they reflect on struggles with life on the run but also lifetimes of poverty, disability, social rejection, parental disapproval, and homophobia. Conversely, viewers may also share in the fugitives’ triumphs and transformations (à la the ‘therapeutic self’), which are supported primarily by the humanising backstories. Unlike other reality television programmes like Border Security (2012-present), for instance, where government agents are presented as ‘heroic defenders’ of national security, Hunted encourages viewers to cheer for the fugitives, which may suggest that the series is somewhat sympathetic to a discourse of disruption rather than adherence to surveillance practices (Walsh, 2015). The same biographies of fugitives that result in a ‘therapeutic self’ that repositions the mass surveillance experience as productive and life affirming also inform an underdog narrative that enables viewers to disassociate with hunters and the state. Like Ricky, viewers may find the hunters to be ‘absolute rotters’ akin to ‘classroom snitches.’

However, the gamedoc works to mollify defiant contestants and curtail transgressive readings of Hunted in myriad ways. The fugitive most vociferously opposed to state surveillance (Ricky), for example, is lambasted for his ‘conspiratorial imagination’ and purported sexual anxiety (based on his internet search history of ‘normal penis length’ revealed by the hunters). Moreover, viewers are rarely given an opportunity to cheer against state surveillance in toto; instead, our options are individual players that can only operate within the rules of the game or rather the powers of the state, which appear legitimate and incontestable. Further, as Whitson explains, ‘the pleasures of play, the promise of a “game”, and the desire to level up and win are used to inculcate desirable skill sets and behaviours’ congruent with current models of neoliberal citizenship (Whitson, 2013: 168). Through play, in other words, fugitives hone their skills of self-sufficiency and responsibility and work to blend in to avoid suspicion. They become increasingly concerned with their physical appearances, especially while carrying large rucksacks and without regular bathing, and adjust their behaviour accordingly. They aim to become, as Hall suggests, ‘transparent travellers’ (Hall, 2015: 1). Within a gamedoc format, surveillance in Hunted becomes a ‘public legitimation tool that encourages the acceptance of otherwise contentious technologies’ (Whitson, 2013: 164). If contestants are caught, it is not because of a violation of privacy by a surveillance state that threatens democratic institutions in the UK but rather because of their own failure to become industrious and creative or, as one hunter exclaims, for ‘being really stupid.’

Conclusion

In many ways, Hunted is uniquely positioned within the genre of reality television in its ability to blend elements of a gamedoc format and the ‘therapeutic self’ within and against an ostensibly political backdrop: national security, risk management, and mass surveillance. It resituates the frenetic energy of a reality television series like The Amazing Race, for instance, and the voyeurism of Candid Camera or Crimewatch UK within a competition between contestants and the state (represented by the hunters). As such, Hunted is prima facie a much more politicised artefact of reality television, one that offers a rich popular pedagogy of surveillance with ‘real world’ concerns. In a way, the series asks contestants and viewers to consider the social consequences of mass surveillance but not necessarily within the genre of reality television, which relies on ‘voluntary transparency’ for moments of self-reflection and demands that contestants always be filmed for entertainment value.

Protracted debates on privacy and security that underwrite both contemporary and historical discourses of surveillance—as found in the Data Protection and Investigatory Powers Act in 2014, the Royal Assent of the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, and formal complaints lodged by Human Rights Watch over surveillance practices in the UK—are eschewed in Hunted through several narrative features. On the one hand, the series relies on a myth of symmetrical surveillance and a ‘fugitive fantasy’ that posits coordinated tracking as exclusively ‘populational’ rather than targeted at specific bodies and communities of risk perceived and codified by the state. The series, in other words, situates surveillance as balanced rather than biased. On the other hand, Hunted (and its entertainment value) seems to thrive on the experiences and identities of its contestants with contrasting results. Personal backstories of fugitives inform the development of a ‘therapeutic self’, which then works to reposition surveillance as productive and life affirming, not repressive and controversial. However, the same fugitive backstories used to build a ‘therapeutic self’ indebted to the mass surveillance experience also situate most contestants as underdogs within a longshot trope, one that encourages viewers to disassociate with not only hunters and the state but also the mass surveillance apparatus responsible for the self-discovery of contestants. Any audience ‘defection’ from the state, however, is recuperated by a gamedoc format that trivialises the personal and political stakes of mass surveillance and ultimately encourages and rewards contestants’ adherence to neoliberal models of citizenship. Here self-transformation through competition—a widely noted shibboleth of neoliberalism—stifles a larger conversation around privacy and the politics of ‘risk management’ applied unequally across communities and bodies.

It seems that key generic conventions of reality television (i.e., individual competition and the ‘therapeutic self’) constrain any radical possibilities of Hunted as a transgressive programme. Oddly, the series legitimises mass surveillance practices in the present by drawing on archival footage of the 2005 London bombings even as it undermines the logic of total observation by personalising contestants rather than hunters. Evidently, Hunted offers a variety of contradictory viewing perspectives that may deviate from government policies and mandates on mass surveillance, so much so that the series cannot be read simply as an ideological state apparatus that builds consensus for the current surveillance regime. Along with personalising the fugitives, Hunted’s fetish for newfangled tracking technology and support for a surveillance-industrial complex is routinely debunked by ‘low tech’ human intelligence like public informants and online bulletins, which often work much more effectively than biometrics and video monitoring in the series. For an assortment of reasons, then, Hunted represents an intriguing focal point within a wider surveillance ‘assemblage’ in popular culture. It is one of the rare reality television gamedocs that engages with and mitigates state power but often in competing and contradictory ways.