‘Dropped’: The tragic TV show accident that killed 10 people
When one thinks of TV shows with deadly consequences, one is normally thinking of the world of fiction.
Films like The Running Man and novels like The Hunger Games are both dystopian looks at what happens when corporations and totalitarian governments, respectively (as if there’s a difference between them these days, waka-waka) exploit our desire for human spectacle and drama to its foulest, most evil extreme. Pitting humans against each other in a brutal fight to the death for the pleasure of the baying masses.
While we’re not quite at the point where the death of real-life humans is the appeal of an average game show (yet), that doesn’t mean that in the real world, there haven’t been lives lost as a direct result of making a TV show. After all, any kind of media made for screen, be it film or TV, is a massive, massive undertaking. One that involves hundreds of people often doing crazy things both on and off camera. It’s very easy for things to go wrong, especially when the bottom line is almost always the most important thing for the people organising all this stuff, and they will cut corners to cut losses.
Now, most of the time, this leads to some overpaid Hollywood dickhead shutting down production for a day because no one found organic tuna for their sandwiches. This can be overcome with some producer sweet-talking, but other times, the consequences can be disastrous to the point of tragic. Especially if the production involves pulling off some ridiculous stunt like dropping a bunch of performers into the middle of nowhere via a helicopter.
Three guesses what the hook of the French TV series Dropped was?
But how did this TV series go so terribly wrong?
The hook of this series was inspired by a Swedish project of the same name.
Eight famous sportspeople would be blindfolded and airlifted into some of the world’s toughest environments. There, they would have to work together to get back to civilisation, with only water and GPS for assistance. Now, immediately, you can see how a project like this can go horrifically wrong. All it would take is the wrong step in the wrong place, and suddenly you’ve got a famous sportsperson dying on camera.
However, the terror of what happened with Dropped happened before the cameras were even rolling. Three of the show’s contestants, sailor Florence Arthaud, boxer Alexis Vastine and Olympic gold medallist swimmer Camille Muffat, were to be dropped in the mountains of the La Rioja province of the Argentine mountains. The contestants were being flown to the location via helicopter along with a separate chopper containing the camera crew.
Both helicopters collided in the air, and the resulting crash killed everyone on board. All three contestants, the two pilots and five crew members. It goes without saying, this was headline news in France, as was the resulting investigation that found the production company guilty of 300 “breaches of labour law and safety obligations”.
“The sudden deaths of our countrymen is a cause of immense sadness,” the French presidency said in a statement at the time.
Francois Holland followed, “Great sadness after the death of eight of our fellow citizens. Florence Arthaud, Camille Muffat, et Alexis Vastine made France shine so bright.”
A sobering reminder that anything can be a matter of life and death, even something as fake as reality TV.