Our Wildest Dreams

In the first episode, ex-businesswoman Mari leaves her home in Greenwich, overlooking the skyscrapers of London's Canary Wharf, for a new life in Ecuador, and a distant, isolated corner of the Amazon. Mari hopes the move to the wild with her native husband Kurikindi, and their five-year-old daughter Samai, will be a fresh start that brings the family even closer. Mari is only the second white person to have ever entered this remote region: a tiny community of just 26 people, where her husband is welcomed as the local shaman and the family aims to build an indigenous home on gifted land.

In this episode, Lyndon and his pregnant wife Ruth are taking the gamble of a lifetime. They've given up their careers in the UK to plough their life savings into starting a new business: running a safari lodge in the Zambian outback with no previous experience. Leaving their family and friends behind, the couple find themselves in primitive conditions, living in a flimsy tent, using a hole in the ground for a toilet, and surrounded by deadly lions, elephants and crocodiles. With just four months to complete the build of their safari lodge before the money runs out, they encounter delays, spiralling costs and safety concerns which threaten to derail everything. As Ruth returns to the UK to give birth, Lyndon is faced with a difficult choice in the African wilderness.

Daniel and Deborah and their three children leave Scotland to build a new home in the mountains of Bali, Indonesia. Their ambitious dream is to live a life without money, building a shelter out of scavenged materials and trying, in Daniel's words, to 're-learn how to live like every other wild animal does on the planet... just from what nature provides.' Deborah and Daniel face hardships they had not imagined possible: hunger, poverty, isolation, not to mention downpours of biblical proportions, as they build a bamboo structure on the edge of a steep hill. All of this while coping with the challenges that come with having three young children. Will it all prove too much for them? Or will they stick to their vow to give their children a better life?

Lynn and Richard and their two young daughters Emily and Yvaine are a 'food-bank family' from Bedfordshire, desperately unhappy with their quality of life in the UK. They pack up their belongings in a horsebox and head for a remote part of central Portugal. Their dream is to live off-grid, be completely self-sufficient and, for the first time ever, escape the pressures of living on the breadline, relying on no one but themselves. They face immediate physical and emotional challenges: camping on an unsuitable plot of land; wild summer storms and forest fires, which render them homeless; and Richard's discovery that he's not quite the builder he thought he was. Lynn struggles with the simplicity of their new life and no flushing toilet. They start to plant crops and rear animals. But money is running out as a second wave of devastating fires delays the building of their new home. Will the family live to regret their decision, or will it bring them closer together?