Why Below Deck Saved Us From A Pandemic Television Drought

In the year we were all forced to stay at home Below Deck truly came into its own. If you have yet to venture into the world of Below Deck it’s been fairly innocuously burning a hole in TV schedules since 2013 on US TV channel Bravo. Yet somehow despite its growing intensity and spin off shows across the world, people only really got to discover the show in 2020 as lockdowns across the world forced people to stay at home.

The ultimate lockdown binge show launched on July 1st, 2013 less of a bang, more of a whimper but soon stirred up a winning formula in its native America. The show follows the team of a luxury yacht as they travel through varied countries serving an increasingly vile selection of guests, whose demands vary from high maintenance to strangely and sometimes perversely sexual. The luxury yacht’s version of Captain Birdseye (Captain Lee Rosbach) is the only 100% consistent in the original show, winning hearts, and minds with such charming expressions as “I’d sooner drag my d**k through broken glass!”. Each year he is reunited with a selection of old favourites and newbies who are determined to make a mark, but often its more the type of stain you find in the toilet, than a warm fuzzy memory.

Three years after it began Below Deck: Mediterranean hit the screens, originally headed up by Mark Howard and then followed by Captain Sandy Yawn. The boat sails through the seasons around Croatia, France, Italy, Greece and Spain, but its here that that magic happened for Americans dreaming of more distant foreign climbs, the mix of different cultures and the arrival of Hannah Ferrier meant that the show evolved into a different beast, similar, but different. Below Deck Med almost comes off as the raunchier cousin of Below Deck.

Next up came Below Deck: Sailing Yacht which follows Captain Glenn Shephard and his team in a sail powered boat, that’s sun begins to set just as Covid-19 hit the world. Covid-19 also touches those in all three series that now offer 50 weeks per year of televisual yachting fun. Med sees the start, the original Below Deck sees the virus completely derail the series and the second series of Yacht begins just as the first wave passes.

The shows creators seeing an uncertain future with travel disrupted, saw a golden opportunity caused by the very thing that drew it to a close prematurely in different ways than most current seasons, and while Below Deck had seen activity out of the US, production Company 51 Minds went on a full out and out incentive to get the show across the world, when the largest possible audience would be trapped at home dreaming of international travel. While technically the show was always a winning formula after a semi-rocky start, in terms of reality shows its always had a little magic about it, the difference now was that it was completely the right time. Tying up with streaming channel Hayu this home (native America) loved show was suddenly making big waves in the United Kingdom, Europe, Hong Kong the Philippines, and Singapore.

Suddenly the world woke up to this show, with the underlying wonder, not only was this something new, focused on travel; but that this “new show” came with it 16 series (with spin offs) and 209 episodes in total, making the series one of the most binged shows of 2020. While its baseline is the sordid lives of the individuals on the yachts as both crew and customers, it unwittingly has educated the world on travel, maritime law, working relationships and in more recent series the absolute fear of discovering a killer virus is spreading across the globe, with the crew only getting snapshots of what most of us saw first-hand, making it is a truly terrifying ordeal for those on the yacht.

As the world was hostage to a pandemic, viewers across the globe tuned in eagerly watching the shows different stories unravel as the varied yachts travel from location to location. It has been a real reminder that there was a real world outside your window. Some streaming figures reveal that those who subscribed to Hayu specifically to see Below Deck were often watching as much as 8 hours a day of the show, often multiple days in a row. With viewing figures growing so high that “terrestrial” television stations could not help but lap up this rare TV wonder, the UK showing episodes of Below Deck: Med daily so as not to miss out on this prize, even Netflix grabbed the show with both horns. For the crew of the boats, their Insta-fame has shot through the roof with original series regular Kate Chastain’s following shooting up a massive 287% in September 2020 alone (despite being on the show for five years prior), her smart mouth proving the delight of the world, grossing over 700,000 followers making her the most insta-famous of all the yachties of all the series.

And as one series closes and another starts and characters flit from Below Deck to Below Deck: Med, or Med to Sailing Yacht its now global audience is sucked into their lives. Over the mammoth 200 episodes we experience life and death in its ultimate form, some fall pregnant, others have close personal death including Below Deck’s Captain Lee having a terribly moving revelation during its 2020 season. For others some of the most popular characters are given unceremonious marching orders.

But all wonder must come to an close, and as 2020’s season of Below Deck comes to an end you truly get to experience the horror of a global pandemic that fills the entire team with fear. For those of us that never had the misfortune to lose a loved one, you get to re-live that crushing feeling of horror as the crew face an uncertain future and the very real understanding that they will be stranded in alien climbs for a long period of time. The fun and joy of these ship faring souls turning very sour very suddenly, as they have absolutely no understanding of what sort of world they will meet when their yachting charter reaches its conclusion. The stress of their uncertain future aging Bosun Eddie, Chef Francesca and Stewardess Elizabeth before your very eyes.

What sort of world will Below Deck have after this pandemic ends? While its popularity will ultimately wain, as we no longer need to travel through the eyes of others, Below Deck has certainly been a saving grace for many and a show that deserves to be cherished for years to come. The show’s well rounded nature means that while you may never truly know the characters, you learn enough to know who is good and who is bad and for longer standing ship mates the feeling of family might be too difficult to resist turning off in future.