User:Patricia.mcclelland

The Volunteers

The Volunteers was a documentary produced by Tommy McClelland in 1983 and screened in 1984. It made history by being the first 'reality TV' show made in Africa.

Fourteen men, women and children, began their six month odyssey for the TV cameras on 31 May, 1983. Their challenge was to live, exactly as the 1820 Settlers did, for six months in a valley in the Bushman's River Valley in what is now known as the Eastern Cape in South Africa.

McClelland intended the documentary to take the form of an experiment, with three particular areas of interest: the groups isolation from 1983; the historical connotations, and the individual and group sociological development that took place.