Hunted UK was pretty boring, didn't give it a chance.
Hunted AU has been above average. Watched season 1 and 2. Season 3 currently ending.
Not as good as Amazing Race and Race to Survive, so limit expectations.
Plot of show: 18 fugitives (9 pairs of 2) escape with money. Can they go off-grid for 20 days and keep their share of $1mil?
They have to keep the money on them. They have to stay in the same Victoria region (Melbourne is biggest city). They have backpacks with camping equipment to start. Turnover their wallets, phones, laptops. They are given a debit card with a set amount. Rely on their wits, personality, and networks to keep on the run.
The hunters are a combination of former intelligence government agency, police, military, and use a high level ethical hacking company. 1 helicopter, police dogs, and drone pilots. 4 ground crews of 2 with chest and hand cams to drive city to city and run them down.
Season 3 made them start the show with a 'bank heist', costing them time to start.
Cheesy: the usual headquarter staff 'doubling efforts' and 'now we're really focused', and 'cannot fail' statements all leaders have to say. It's TV after all.
Realistically speaking, but hammed up too much, is the chase for anyone they figure out is ex-cop / ex-military - it's a personal challenge for the Chief!
'We're fugitives!' they have to say all the time, while wearing body cams and have a camera person with them. A lot more helpful people than they'd meet otherwise. Do show a lot of denials though. Nobody's house is a mess, not even a stranger's.
Obviously, there is always going to be some low hanging fruit fugitive teams that you question why they even signed up.
Editing: has to be some, otherwise you'd see the camera person in every shot, on every heat imaging, etc. Time sped up on some tactics that take an immense amount of hours to accomplish (imagine watching all those traffic / business cameras minute by minute or gathering location data on pictures from their social networking sites/cell phones). Some simulated as it would be illegal to perform as non law enforcement (warrants, online account details, person of interest requests, etc).
Cool techniques to watch from fugitive perspective:
- counter-measures to re-direct the search for them (one team placed a lot of misinformation at their possible hoarder locations)
- how some successfully change their appearance (skip the wigs and hair dyes, there was some decent make-up artist face masking, another got themselves done up as drag queens while a town was having a massive DQ convention).
- only a few actually camp and move, camp and move - seems common sense to me - stay off-line, don't use the debit card, and stay out of a camera's view
- use their known skills and network (off-road racers used their rally car network... they used backtracking, misdirection on taxi, car changes, prop-plane to other side of region, houseboat on a lake). Some effectively use racial minority and religious networks to move around.
- intentionally using the debit card to pull the hunters to a location
- messing with the hunters by posting social media pics of themselves at locations, putting the 'wanted poster' tipline number on a 'free ____' posting on the local online shopping website so they all call the tipline.
Cool tactics to watch from hunter perspective (even cooler when it involves a stranger):
- online persona / social media scouring for contacts and assistants
- face recognition AI
- phone tracking + cell tower triangulation + phone call list requests
- debit card tracking + bank money tracking if spent
- drone use day and night
- security cam footage from businesses, street cams, ATMs
- highway system monitoring that can detect if the vehicles have went by and when
- vehicle computer systems tracking + security systems + 'SOS' assistance capabilities
- listening devices and cams left at suspected helper locations
It's usually a helper that doesn't know how to shush up that gets some caught (I left a note for ____, code word list left out, phone location turned on, phone turned on, immediately calling someone to say the hunters were just there... you are being listened to and gave away another possible clue!) They gone... leave them gone!
To win the $ they have to get to a rendezvous point on the final day. It can be anywhere in the region (state). They are given that point 24 hours prior and the hunters are notified of their exact location at that moment (but not the RZ info). Hardest part of the show - getting to an unknown location that you can't prepare for and all hunter forces are combined on the few fugitives left to chase. The race is on...
The only thing I subscribe to Apple for is this and whenever (if) that Wool series comes back. I thought they were released all at once last season and ended up paying for 3 months waiting for all of them to come out. Shan't do that again.
