Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild

Ben heads back to Sweden to revisit Annalisa, a single mother who was developing a forest hideaway on the fringes of society for her and her young son. Now three years later, Annalisa has a new partner and an enviable homestead, and Ben learns of the extraordinary journey the trio took during the pandemic and how they sustain their thrifty life with such passion and ambition.

Ben joins Chris, a former paratrooper, in the beautiful county of Dorset on the south coast of England. Ben spends a week with Chris who, despite losing nearly everything, has spent the last five years walking the UK's coastline. Ben discovers what has motivated Chris and how he has turned his life around, found love and raised thousands for charity. Ben join Chris and his faithful dog companion, Jet, 27,000 miles into their walk where they've now hit the Jurassic Coast. And they're no longer alone – Chris met his partner, fellow hiker Kate and now they are parents to baby Magnus. Ben learns what Chris calls "the art" of living wild on the road, once as a solo experience, but now with a young family. He learns how to desalinate sea water and forage the nature around him, embraces river washing and charming local fisherman for food, while beginning to understand what it's like to "wild parent" and where this intrepid family are heading next.

Ben journeys into the heart of Zambia to live with a British family who have built a safari lodge on the edge of a national park. Ben uncovers what prompted this intrepid couple to start a new business and a family in the unforgiving bush, and learns how they have had to overcome fire and flooding to keep their African dream alive.

en heads to Tuscany to visit British couple George and Sophie who breathed new life into a Tuscan farmhouse. Ben discovers how George's adolescent desire to live a self-sufficient existence seeded an ambitious plan to create a lifelong project and how a chance encounter enabled Sophie to find what seemed improbable.

Ben heads to Slab City in California to meet an extraordinary homeless artist called DNA, who Ben had previously met whilst in the area making another documentary. Ben joins DNA in his 'Mad Max' camp on a desert hill, an extreme place to seek refuge, but like most residents in Slab City, he discovers DNA had few choices. Ben learns the harsh reality of what it's like to be homeless in the US, and the downward cycle that people can find themselves in.

Ben travels to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the USA to meet Mike Basich, a snowboarder who left the world of professional sport behind to reconnect with nature and pursue a quieter life. Ben joins him in his extraordinary hand-built log cabin and follows him as he embarks on a life changing project.

Ben heads back to the stunning Saharan landscape of Morocco, where he first met Karen, an artist who had turned her back on urban life to live in the desert.

A disabled retiree turned into a modern-day nomad travels across the United States.

Ben travels to get a crash course in felling trees and the art of charcoal making.

We join Ben on the cliffs of Cornwall, where he is staying with Davina and Todd.

Ben heads to Ireland to visit Georg and Bettina, a couple who've lived there for 40 years.

Ben journeys to the Suffolk countryside and a secretive patch of woodland, to spend the week with unique character Will, 50, who could be described as a true British caveman. Ben embraces Will's Stone Age-style existence in the forest and discovers how a childhood passion carved Will's future, the price he paid for following his dream, and how he is steering it back around as Ben meets him at a new stage in his prehistoric life.

The presenter ventures deep into the Scottish Highlands to meet Iona and her young family on the near-10,000-acre wilderness estate that she grew up on. Whilst in their company, Ben drives cattle on horseback, digs out a dam to ensure the family's hydro-electricity supply and gets to grips with the annual deer cull, and hears how Iona's past prepared her for this extraordinary life in the wilderness.

Ben revisits Simon and Debbie in Exmoor National Park.

Ben meets a family that has created a new home in the Devon countryside - but having had to fight to be allowed to build on the land, they now find peace hard to adjust to. Nevertheless, they continue in their drive to be as self-sufficient as possible. However, Ben spots a new development in their lives that could present them with their next big challenge.

Ben revisits Amanda Owen and her family at their remote farm of Ravenseat in the Yorkshire Dales, who have gone on to star in Our Yorkshire Farm since he first met them. Ben discovers how they get by in the tough world of farming and meeting the latest addition to their flock.

Ben meets Jake Williams, a 70-year-old hermit living on the edge of a forest in the Cairngorms, who has made a home on the site of an ancient settlement and enjoys a diet of roadkill stir fry. Ben helps him with some wild gardening and gets a taste of his musical talents and mischievous sense of humour.

Ben Fogle meets a former film-maker who has made a home in the highlands of eastern Iceland, and set up a wilderness centre exploring 200 years of local history. Ben takes part in an ancient tradition where thousands of sheep that have spent the summer in the mountains are sorted, as well as bathing in a hot waterfalls, riding horses on the plateau, and smokes trout with dung.

Ben Fogle is reunited with seafarer Rick, who has moved on to pastures new since their original encounter. When Rick last appeared on the series, he was living off the coast of French Polynesia, but he has since made a fresh start on the Pacific island of Fiji. In the intervening years, Rick has acquired a new boat and is now travelling alone - but remains as enthusiastic as ever about his unusual lifestyle and believes that anyone can follow in his wake and gain a newfound sense of freedom - if they have the right attitude.

A life-threatening parachuting accident was the catalyst that persuaded Jim Alston to pursue his "Robinson Crusoe" dream, while his partner Kim Nguyen also had a near-death experience in a horrific car crash. In 2017 Ben Fogle went to visit the pair on the aptly named Wilderness Island off Australia’s north-western cape, where he got a lesson in the art of mud-crabbing and the necessity for fresh water (which the island was without). Ben now returns to find Kim and Jim have now built an eco-resort and gained an extended family. "This island has served as therapy for both of them," he concludes. SUMMARY Ben reunites with a couple living off the west coast of Australia, and discovers the logistical nightmares they have overcome to make a home for themselves on a desert island, as well as enduring the extremes of the Australian climate. While they have recently had cause to celebrate, their lives are becoming increasingly difficult, which may result in them moving on.

While we may all feel a little isolated under the current circumstances, some people really have got away from it all, setting up home in some of the most remote locations on earth. Ben Fogle returns to see how some of them have fared, starting with the Long family in New Zealand. You may remember they were two days’ walk from the nearest road, so it was very much a hunter-gatherer existence. “Bewitching, but horribly tough – like camping for ever” is how RT described it. So how have the children coped with such an isolated upbringing, and how have the parents maintained their relationship? SUMMARY Ben reunites with people he previously met in some of the most remote locations on Earth, discovering how life has changed for his hosts.

As one of the world's most in-demand sporting coaches, 43-year-old Nikola Boric once travelled the world, welcomed everywhere he went. Now, he lives in a wooden cabin without electricity, water or heating, with just some pigs and goats for company. Experiencing Nikola's new life in the woods above the village of Kokocak on the edge of Papuk Nature Park, Ben tries to understand what drove Nikola to make a sudden decision to quit everything and retire to such a forgotten corner of the world, finding a new life of purity and self-sufficiency away from mainstream society.

Ben meets a scientist in Siberia, who gave up his urban life to work in the Russian Arctic on finding ways to reduce the impact of climate change on the permafrost. His project makes use of steam machines and monster trucks, but away from his environmental work, he is working on the idea of bringing the woolly mammoth back from extinction.

Ben meets a Glaswegian retired teacher who relocated to the mountains of Ethiopia, and leads an active life in her new home as she approaches her 70th birthday. She has made significant contributions to the local community, including setting up a school and building a restaurant on an isolated mountain top over the course of three years.

Ben travels to highlands of Panama to meet a couple who turned their backs on a comfortable lifestyle in the US to try their hand at coffee producing. During the busy harvest season, Ben learns the finer details of how to craft his favourite drink.

Scott and Casey spent their savings on a kite-surfing school.

Judith rejected a modern way of life for one close to nature.

Ben meets a nomadic couple in Bulgaria's Rhodope Mountains.

Ben journeys to Ireland to meet a widow that rejected a modern way of life.

Ben travels to the vast forests of the Rhodope Mountains in Bulgaria to join Miriam and her husband Peter, a couple who have chosen life as nomads, hiking through some of the world's most striking wildernesses.

French-Canadian Julien lives in a remote Buddhist monastery in the jungle-mountains of Thailand, far off any conventional map. Ben learns how and why this former teenage student from the West stripped away all complications of a modern life for a primitive Eastern and religious existence, and how this choice affected his family.

Ben journeys to the Ozark National Forest in Arkansas, to live with master craftsman Robert, learning why this 70-year-old former medical student ditched his education for America's counterculture 20 years ago, bought 200 acres of land deep in the woods, and raised a family of six children. Ben sees how far-reaching Robert's skills are, including cabin-making techniques dating back to the 13th century, and how his family have supported him in his dream.

Ben travels to the Ozark Plateau in Missouri to live with a wilderness expert, Bo, who gave up life on the road with his bluegrass band to teach survival skills.

In a remote part of Andalucia in Spain, Ben meets a couple from Brighton who gave up their careers to breed alpacas.

Ben journeys to North Africa, to live with American widow Maryanne on the farm she's built on the edge of the Sahara. He discovers why she swapped her city abode for a simpler and tougher way of life in the Egyptian desert.

Ben travels to an island off Australia's north-western cape to meet two people who were compelled to turn their backs on their former lifestyles after going through similar, tragic experiences.

Ben travels to a secret location in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, where forest dweller Tod Kershaw lives in a primitive skills community who have chosen not to live as members of modern society, but as opportunistic outsiders who scavenge other peoples' waste.

Ben travels to Ibiza to meet a former merchant sailor.

Ben joins a couple beginning a new life in rural Hungary.

Ben journeys to the Pacific Northwest to live with former punk wild-child Lynx who lives, hunts, eats and sleeps in the wilderness.

Kimberley Region, Australia

Bill and Bob Stone are twin brothers aged 72 who fled their adrenaline-junkie pasts for a tough subsistence lifestyle hidden away in Americaʼs Wild West. In this unforgiving landscape, even with one of them recovering from a stroke, they carve out an existence and fight the challenges associated with growing old. Ben joins these canyon-dwelling renegades in their remote, isolated home, deep inside some of the worldʼs most striking and wild terrain.

Ben heads to Africa and the deep desert sand dunes of Namibia. He lives with 50-year-old Gideon David and his young family in the largest conservation area on the continent. Gideon is a master bushman who quit a city career in life insurance for the dry and dusty desert.

Documentary series in which adventurer Ben Fogle meets people who have given up the rat race to start a new life in the wilderness. Ben journeys to one of the 7,000 remote tropical islands in the Philippines to live with 'Jungle Neil' Hoag, a 45-year-old former cabbie from Florida who struggled to make a living before finding the love of his life on the other side of the world and becoming a coconut farmer.

In this opening episode, Ben journeys to the swamplands of south Georgia in the USA, to live with 64-year-old Colbert, a former city fat cat earning big bucks in the world of high finance, who has turned Tarzan. Colbert now lives in his hand-built wooden cabin, totally off the grid and with no toilet – a far cry from the luxurious pad he used to own. From Colbert, Ben learns some of the vital skills needed to survive in this dangerous backwater, including skinning road-kill, spearing frogs, drinking swamp water and building a human nest. He also discovers that his host is a sex guru! Facing the dangers of living in the wild, humidity and mosquitoes, Ben embraces what it is like to truly live alone in one of the biggest swamps in North America.

Ben travels to New Zealand and meets hunter-gatherers.

Ben travels to a remote island to live with a former Sydney businessman.