Eden was produced by KEO Films and broadcast on Channel 4 in the 9 PM Monday slot beginning 18 July 2016. The premise was austere: 23 participants, no script, no challenges, no goal beyond building a self-sufficient community in the Scottish wilderness. Cast members were chosen for skills the experiment might need. Junior doctors Ali and Jenna Rae Carr. A former army officer, Jack Campbell. A carpenter named Raphael Meade. A vet, Robert P. A chef, Stephen. A locksmith and fisherman, Lloyd Morgan. A marine conservationist and forager, Katie Tunn. The crew themselves, Ben Johnston, Jane Handa, Matt Andrews, and Ollie Sloane, lived alongside the participants. The whole production took up a 600-acre stretch of the Ardnamurchan Estate at Cul na Croise, secured by a Section 11 Order of the 2003 Land Reform Act that closed off public access for the duration of filming.

The first four episodes of Eden aired from 18 July to 8 August 2016. They drew lukewarm reviews and worse ratings. Channel 4 made the decision, by all accounts unannounced, to pull the show after the fourth episode. The participants, still in the Scottish wilderness, had no way to know. They went on building shelters, slaughtering animals (the show carried an over-16 rating partly because of the slaughter footage), and arguing about how to organise themselves. They went on filming. Channel 4 ran extra material on its website, The Making of Eden and Counting Down to Eden, but the main series simply stopped. Reports of contestants leaving the camp leaked into the British press. Stories of near-starvation circulated. By March 2017, when the experiment formally ended and ten of the original 23 emerged from the woods, the situation had become genuinely strange: a reality show whose subjects did not know they were not on the air.

On 23 March 2017 Channel 4 announced that Eden had finished. Then in July 2017 they reversed course and confirmed five more episodes would air. On 7 August 2017 Eden: Paradise Lost premiered, and the Guardian critic Phil Harrison described what came across the screen: 'The group remained in their wilderness, arguing, longing for food and going quietly cuckoo. And suddenly, Eden is back, oddly compelling in its attritional grimness.' Of the original 23, the show's records list at least eight who left during the year: Tara Zieleman, Ben Johnston, Tom Wah, Ali, Lloyd Morgan, Robert P, Rachel, and the group of three (Jenna Rae Carr, Jasmine, Sam Brown) who departed together. Raphael Meade, the 55-year-old carpenter, was voted out. Some who left took to social media to argue the edited footage had not captured what the experience really felt like.

The chosen location was Cul na Croise, a steep, isolated bay on the Ardnamurchan peninsula in Lochaber, west of Fort William and reachable today only by a long, single-track road or by sea. The same coastal landscape, the same combination of remoteness and rough beauty, made Ardnamurchan a Special Operations Executive training ground in the Second World War. The same qualities that suited SOE commando training suited an experiment in isolation. The Highland Council granted Channel 4 the right to suspend public access. Local opinion was split. Some feared environmental damage, others hoped for an economic boost. Both groups got less than they expected. The show went off air. The land went back to its usual quiet. The 600 acres of Ardnamurchan absorbed the experiment without much trace, the way Ardnamurchan absorbs most human intentions: politely, and almost completely.