TV series Escape filmed global survival challenges

“We wanted to find five different environments for each episode to stage our crash sites - deserts, mountains, jungles, islands and ice,” says Rob Rawlings, the show’s series producer, in comments to KFTV.

“After many months of searching we found two countries that could offer two environments each. Northern Mexico had deserts and mountains, and Panama has some great jungles and many desert islands off its coastline.

"For ice we came closer to home and filmed in Iceland. They had to be remote and extreme but have the access.

“The most important reasons in choosing the locations came down to how hard and expensive it was going to be to get the vehicles into the crash sites and whether we could find the right kind of vehicles that we needed in these countries – it turns out that old 727 passenger planes are not easy to find!

“In the end it came down to the fixers – a good fixer can make anything happen, but a great fixer can make anything happen at a reasonable price.”

Each challenge was loosely based on a real-life crash site, with the debris having to come from real aircraft and vehicles so that the contestants had completely authentic resources and equipment with which to attempt their escapes.

“The biggest challenges we faced during filming were definitely the logistics and the environments themselves,” says Rawlings.

“From how to transport a 140-foot plane fuselage down a busy Mexican Highway and then deep into desert, to how to keep the crew and cameras going in temperatures over 47 degrees Celsius or 100% humidity!”

Maverick worked with service company BZ Producciones in Mexico, Paragon Productions in Panama and True North for the Iceland leg of the shoot.

Images: Channel 4/Vance Jacobs/Maverick TV