The BEST episodes of Ben Fogle: New Lives In The Wild

Every episode of Ben Fogle: New Lives In The Wild ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Ben Fogle: New Lives In The Wild!

Adventurer Ben Fogle gets a taste of extreme escapism in this brand new series meeting those who have turned their backs on the daily grind. Each week, Ben spends time in one of the world’s most remote locations, meeting the people who now inhabit these inhospitable corners of the planet after leaving their ordinary lives behind. Our intrepid guide also wonders whether these extraordinary individuals and their incredible experiences might tempt him to move his own family out of London and away from the comforts of the city. Is it daring or downright crazy? Ben wants to discover the truth about life in tough, harsh conditions, where doing battle with Mother Nature is a daily reality.

Last Updated: 3/24/2024Network: Channel 5Status: Continuing
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Alaska
star
8.92
50 votes

#1 - Alaska

Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 4/29/2013

Ben Fogle joins a family in a mountainside yurt in Alaska.

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Wales
star
8.80
5 votes

#2 - Wales

Season 14 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/23/2021

Ben revisits Emma, who lives a completely organic and off-grid life in an overgrown Welsh woodland, and has managed to make herself completely independent from the outside world. Emma reveals how she has needed to adapt her lifestyle as she has got older, and introduces the others who have joined her. Ben helps them to construct a communal mud hut and learns about the building's spiritual purpose.

Watch Now:Amazon
Panama
star
8.77
44 votes

#3 - Panama

Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/22/2014

Ben journeys to Central America to live with Ian Usher, a 49-year-old British former dump-truck driver who sold 'his life' on eBay and bought a tiny island off the coast of Panama for £30,000.

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Laos
star
8.75
12 votes

#4 - Laos

Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 7/20/2015

Ben journeys to southeast Asia to live with 31-year-old former city financier Jon Watkinson in his hand-made bamboo hut on a hidden jungle island on the Mekong river in Laos.

Namibia
star
8.67
42 votes

#5 - Namibia

Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/21/2014

For the first time on New Lives in the Wild, Ben heads to Africa and the deep desert sand dunes of Namibia. He lives with 50-year-old Gideon David and his young family in the largest conservation area on the continent. Gideon is a master bushman who quit a city career in life insurance for the dry and dusty desert. Ben embraces the harsh and relentless work of farm life in temperatures pushing 40 degrees. He tends over 150 animals, repairs baboon damage to water pipes and even learns how to castrate sheep with his teeth! Ben also witnesses the reality of life when one has to think about raising children in these conditions, from hand-washing nappies to learning vital desert survival skills and hunting and eating oryx.

Watch Now:Amazon
Himalayan Foothills
star
8.63
43 votes

#6 - Himalayan Foothills

Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/7/2014

Ben journeys to the foothills of the Indian Himalayas to live with former fighter pilot, 69- year-old Steve Lall. Steve turned his back on high society, instead opting for a simple farmer’s life in the mountains. He has fought for decades to protect his tiny private wilderness. Ben joins this mountain-dwelling renegade and his family in their remote, isolated home, a steep 2km climb from the nearest road. He gets hands-on with their harsh subsistence lifestyle, from ploughing with buffalo, chasing monkeys and human intruders, to the more surreal grave digging and naked meditation. Ben discovers that the hardships of this remote location are also the key to its beauty.

Cambodia
star
8.57
7 votes

#7 - Cambodia

Season 6 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/5/2017

Ben travels to Cambodia to live with a fellow Brit who is raising his own castaway tribe on a tropical island. Ben sleeps in a hammock, drinks rainwater and experiences how fragile life is for this family on their tiny island.

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Canada
star
8.57
7 votes

#8 - Canada

Season 8 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/15/2019

Jeff, Rose and their daughters are adventurous off-gridders.

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Bulgaria
star
8.56
9 votes

#9 - Bulgaria

Season 8 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/8/2019

Ben meets a nomadic couple in Bulgaria's Rhodope Mountains.

Alaska
star
8.50
10 votes

#10 - Alaska

Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/28/2014

Ben is no stranger to remote parts, but this trip to Alaska will test him to the limit. His only access to his hostsʼ home is via bush plane. If he were to walk, the journey would take ten days and would take him right through grizzly bear country. Ben joins married couple Mike and Fran Turner, who welcome him into their simple, self-built log cabin. He discovers how they have created a self-sufficient lifestyle by working the land and trapping the animals around them. Despite battling against forest fires in the summer and freezing conditions in the winter, the family very rarely venture back into civilisation. Ben takes every opportunity to get stuck into forest survival, battling mosquitoes and learning to cope with 24-hour daylight. The new river season is beginning and there is heavy labour involved. Deep in the woods, he chops trees, learns about trapping and deadly forest fires, feeds fish guts to the plants and even eats bear.

Watch Now:Amazon
Thailand
star
8.50
8 votes

#11 - Thailand

Season 7 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/9/2018

French-Canadian Julien lives in a remote Buddhist monastery in the jungle-mountains of Thailand, far off any conventional map. Ben learns how and why this former teenage student from the West stripped away all complications of a modern life for a primitive Eastern and religious existence, and how this choice affected his family.

Watch Now:Amazon
Sri Lanka
star
8.50
8 votes

#12 - Sri Lanka

Season 9 - Episode 4 - Aired 5/7/2019

Ben meets a 30-year-old British vet who swapped her job in Newcastle to provide medical care to some of the island's three million street dogs.

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Oregon
star
8.45
11 votes

#13 - Oregon

Season 11 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/4/2020

Ben visits an ex-photographer who lives an isolated life in the wilds of Oregon, harvesting weeds for nutrition. There, Ben experiences a Native American-inspired sweat lodge.

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Freedom Cove, Canada
star
8.44
9 votes

#14 - Freedom Cove, Canada

Season 6 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/24/2017

Ben meets a couple who have made their home on a floating island they have built themselves which sits in the aptly named Freedom Cove on Canada's west coast.

Brazil
star
8.43
7 votes

#15 - Brazil

Season 8 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/29/2019

Ben returns to where his own personal adventures began.

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Ireland
star
8.40
10 votes

#16 - Ireland

Season 8 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/22/2019

Judith rejected a modern way of life for one close to nature.

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The Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia, Canada
star
8.36
11 votes

#17 - The Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia, Canada

Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/15/2016

Ben meets former war correspondent Julius Strauss and his Estonian wife Kristin, the former bureau chief at Reuters. They gave up successful careers as journalists in Europe for a new life as grizzly bear guides in the Selkirk Mountains.

Australia
star
8.35
54 votes

#18 - Australia

Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 4/22/2013

Ben travels to a remote island to live with a former Sydney businessman.

Watch Now:Amazon
New Zealand
star
8.33
12 votes

#19 - New Zealand

Season 11 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/21/2020

Ben meets Lucy, who left Britain to start a new life with her husband Tim on New Zealand's north island. They now live with their two daughters in a yurt beside a river in the middle of 25 acres of woodland they have transformed into a farm. Ben discovers how the forest provides the family with everything they need, getting a taste of their daily routine of chopping wood and foraging for wild foods. He also discovers how the couple are providing their children with an alternative education and the campaign of activism Lucy has embarked on from their wilderness home.

Watch Now:Amazon
Dorset
star
8.33
3 votes

#20 - Dorset

Season 17 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/14/2023

Ben joins Chris, a former paratrooper, in the beautiful county of Dorset on the south coast of England. Ben spends a week with Chris who, despite losing nearly everything, has spent the last five years walking the UK's coastline. Ben discovers what has motivated Chris and how he has turned his life around, found love and raised thousands for charity. Ben join Chris and his faithful dog companion, Jet, 27,000 miles into their walk where they've now hit the Jurassic Coast. And they're no longer alone – Chris met his partner, fellow hiker Kate and now they are parents to baby Magnus. Ben learns what Chris calls "the art" of living wild on the road, once as a solo experience, but now with a young family. He learns how to desalinate sea water and forage the nature around him, embraces river washing and charming local fisherman for food, while beginning to understand what it's like to "wild parent" and where this intrepid family are heading next.

Watch Now:Amazon
Australia Revisit
star
8.33
3 votes

#21 - Australia Revisit

Season 17 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/21/2023

Ben returns to rural Western Australia to catch up with charismatic widow Barbara. Since he last saw her, she has faced a serious cancer scare and a devastating bush fire that nearly destroyed everything.

Croatia
star
8.30
10 votes

#22 - Croatia

Season 11 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/28/2020

As one of the world's most in-demand sporting coaches, 43-year-old Nikola Boric once travelled the world, welcomed everywhere he went. Now, he lives in a wooden cabin without electricity, water or heating, with just some pigs and goats for company. Experiencing Nikola's new life in the woods above the village of Kokocak on the edge of Papuk Nature Park, Ben tries to understand what drove Nikola to make a sudden decision to quit everything and retire to such a forgotten corner of the world, finding a new life of purity and self-sufficiency away from mainstream society.

Watch Now:Amazon
Georgia Swamplands
star
8.26
19 votes

#23 - Georgia Swamplands

Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 2/6/2014

In this opening episode, Ben journeys to the swamplands of south Georgia in the USA, to live with 64-year-old Colbert, a former city fat cat earning big bucks in the world of high finance, who has turned Tarzan. Colbert now lives in his hand-built wooden cabin, totally off the grid and with no toilet – a far cry from the luxurious pad he used to own. From Colbert, Ben learns some of the vital skills needed to survive in this dangerous backwater, including skinning road-kill, spearing frogs, drinking swamp water and building a human nest. He also discovers that his host is a sex guru! Facing the dangers of living in the wild, humidity and mosquitoes, Ben embraces what it is like to truly live alone in one of the biggest swamps in North America.

Kimberley Region, Australia
star
8.25
12 votes

#24 - Kimberley Region, Australia

Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 7/27/2015

Ben meets a 61-year-old widow from Europe who has lived alone in an isolated camp in the Australian bush for eight years.

Ullapool
star
8.25
4 votes

#25 - Ullapool

Season 15 - Episode 1 - Aired 3/30/2021

The presenter ventures deep into the Scottish Highlands to meet Iona and her young family on the near-10,000-acre wilderness estate that she grew up on. Whilst in their company, Ben drives cattle on horseback, digs out a dam to ensure the family's hydro-electricity supply and gets to grips with the annual deer cull, and hears how Iona's past prepared her for this extraordinary life in the wilderness.