Hunted Australia‘s Chief Investigator Dr David Craig has debunked claims Channel Ten’s cat-and-mouse series is “scripted” and “fake”.
The popular series, which kicks off its second season on July 17, follows everyday Australians acting as “Fugitives” on the run from a set of high-skilled “Hunters” trying to capture them.
Some viewers have suspected Hunted isn’t as off-the-cuff as producers want you to think. However, David says that’s a load of hogwash!
“A lot of people say it’s scripted or whatever, it’s simply not,” he told Yahoo! Lifestyle. “I wouldn’t have anything to do with that.
“There are no scripts, there’s nothing to follow. It’s dynamic, and you never know what’s going to happen.”
He also said he believes the show is so entertaining to watch because it’s “authentic” and “as real as it possibly could be”.
“No one knows what we’re going to do as Hunters,” he details. “No one tells me where to send the ground Hunters or what they can do. I’ll decide that and I will send them where I want them and that will be based on the intelligence that the Hunters gather.
“And the Fugitives, they can go anywhere they want within certain parameters… I have not been told what they are, but they have certain things they can’t do. But apart from those things, they have free will to do whatever the hell they like.”
He added: “I’ve done a whole range of different training scenarios at the highest level that law enforcement can deliver, and this is the most realistic training exercise you can get.”
Hunted Australia viewers slam the show for FAKING locations
Despite David saying Hunted is “as real as it could possibly be”, one viewer noticed a serious faux-pas during Season One.
In Hunted Australia 2022‘s third episode, the Hunters took to Melbourne’s southeastern suburb of Emerald to trail Karen Harding and Brittany Fleet.
However, one Emerald local said that the described locations don’t line up with what’s on-screen.
“The bird’s-eye view of ‘Emerald’ was a suburban town,” she told So Dramatic!. “No trees, and there were houses everywhere, which means they’ve faked the location considering we live in a sparse town in the hills”.
Another viewer also pointed this out on Twitter.
Why is the file footage of emerald from above clearly not emerald #HuntedAU
— Dean Boggainho Boggainho (@deanbogga) July 18, 2022
While most of the on-the-ground footage was taken in Emerald, So Dramatic!‘s source added that they thought “the way they edited [the chase] was so fake”.
“It’ll show them finding the girls in Emerald, but it’s so poorly edited that it doesn’t make sense geographically,” she said.
Due to the inconsistencies, the local said it makes the series hard to watch.
“People from Melbourne can’t enjoy it,” she confessed. “It’s just so fake.”
Let’s hope Hunted 2023 has a more thorough editing team!
Want even more goss? Listen to the So Dramatic! podcast with Megan Pustetto below!
Know something that we don’t? Spill the tea here!
Get the tea first! Follow So Dramatic! on Instagram and tune in on Mondays to get your reality tea fix with the So Dramatic! podcast with Megan Pustetto.
