Gone To Ground

Having provided some of 2019’s most exciting television so far, Hunted brothers Harry and Frank Savage are readapting to normal life

- Duncan Hall

Anyone looking for heart-stopping television in 2019 should have watched the final minutes of Channel Four’s reality game show Hunted.

Having evaded the black-clad hunters for 24 days, brothers Frank and Harry Savage were close to clinching the fourth series’ £100,000 prize. But with only half-an-hour to go before their escape by helicopter from a Birmingham car park roof, Harry was caught in the city centre – leaving 24-year-old Frank alone. His desperate race to the top of the car park and final capture, with only two-and-a-half minutes to spare, completed the series’ first clean sweep of contestants – an event soundtracked by howls of anguish and “fix” from fans on social media.

Back at his farm and campsite just outside Alfriston the day after the final episode’s broadcast, Frank isn’t bitter about the money slipping from his grasp. “I did the best that I could,” he says. “Harry had the map of where we needed to be, so I was lost running around Birmingham – it was a fluke that I saw the right place! I was so physically exhausted I threw up after they caught me.”

Frank and Harry, now 21, proved a formidable foe to the team of professional hunters – who are drawn from the police and military – and to the camera crews assigned to follow them across the country. From their initial drop-off in the centre of Liverpool to the final scramble across Birmingham, Frank estimates the brothers walked between 250 and 300 miles – including all 110 miles of the South Downs Way in just three days. “We killed a few camera crews,” he laughs.

For Harry it was a similarly arduous experience – not least because he had forgotten to pack sensible walking shoes and had only shorts to protect him against the waves of stinging nettles the pair encountered.