 Euan Ferguson of "The Observer" expressed concern about the "producer selection" of mollycoddled males who might fail to cope with the wilds of the island, but thought that the participants might "make a fist of surviving, and confound a few lazy stereotypes", and that he was "semi-hooked".In the second series, Charlotte Runcie of "The Daily Telegraph" thought that watching people learning to "cooperate in extreme situations is always strangely compelling", although Rupert Hawksley of the same paper felt that the second series, despite the presence of women, was "every bit as sexist" as the first series.The participants' struggle with survival prompted joking references to "Lord of the Flies".