Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild - Season 4 (2015)

Ben spends weeks with Englishman John W. (32), who left the London rat race and a safe job to live on a desolate Mekong island in Laos among simple villagers, with a fisherman as his mentor. John is happy living a hard, almost self-supporting country life with such tasks as growing his own crops, herding water buffaloes and fishing with traps in a dangerous torrent. On top come occasional chores and community life, even moving a hie on poles on shoulders. Ben gets the pros despite all the sweat and pain it costs, but also worries in the long run if John's choice ...

Ben has mixed feelings about sharing a week in the life of Barbara, who left the utter 'dull' safety of neat Switzerland for an adventurous life in the Australian outback. She remained soldiering on after the dead of her buckaroo husband, one of the last 'real' bush men. She's committed to animals, even wildlife, and utterly dependent on machinery which seems beyond repair. Forgoing nearly all comfort, she must contend with scorching heat, often even at night.

Ben Fogle admires Justin, a natural at self-reliance in the Appalachians, who refused at 18 to enter the rat race and moved into a cabin on his grandfather's Tennessee woodland to avoid 'being lived' five years ago. Justin, who earns the necessary cash as blacksmith, has little patience with Ben's regular clumsiness at handiwork wielding say a hammer. He proves himself an efficient hunter, tanner, food preserver etcetera, content with a pioneer life style, but may have to compromise for his fairly like-mined, yet semi-urbanized girl friend from North Carolina.