‘Chief’ David Craig on criminals, reality-TV fatigue and upping the ante for season two of Hunted
David Craig – aka The Chief from last year’s TV hit Hunted – reveals just how far he’s prepared to go to catch his Fugitives.
International covert operations expert turned reality TV host David Craig knows a thing or two about flying under the radar.
In his long and decorated career in law enforcement, Craig – better known to fans of Channel 10’s hit show Hunted as The Chief – has operated in the shadows to help catch the Bali bombers, provide personal protection for three Prime Ministers, and has run his own consultancy business for the last decade.
But his most impressive clandestine feat might just be the fact that he can still wander around his local supermarket without getting noticed, despite fronting one of last year’s most popular shows.
“No one’s ever recognised me,” Craig says, with a laugh, adding, “despite the large sign that I’m carrying around. And I’m quite happy with it.
“I’ve been in high profile investigations – but I was able to melt away into the public quite nicely.”
More than a million people tuned in each week to watch The Chief and his dogged posse of “Hunters”, including his Deputy of Intelligence Ben Owen and Deputy of Operations Reece Dewar, track down nine teams of two “Fugitives”, who were desperate to evade capture for 21 days in the hope of winning a $100,000 prize.
Hunted, which was based on the British series of the same name, proved to be one of the breakout hits of last year, and Craig thinks it’s because its unpredictable, unscripted nature appealed to an audience that is “a little bit reality-TV tired”.
“A lot of stuff seems orchestrated and planned, with tests and goals and things like that, whereas this is completely dynamic and it’s real,” Craig says. “None of the Hunters are TV people so we don’t have lines, we don’t have anything rehearsed.
“That makes it fresher for people to watch because no one really knows what’s going to happen. It’s not like ‘this is the third round of the best bed-making competition’. It’s just find these buggers and get them taken out of the game’.”
As a long-time investigator, Craig was initially reluctant to sign up to the first season of Hunted and says that he still sometimes feels a little self-conscious of the cameras and TV trappings of the elaborate studio/command centre a stone’s throw from Melbourne’s Highpoint shopping mall. But watching from the sidelines as his Hunters dial in from all parts of Victoria and his team of ethical hackers and communications experts try to predict the Fugitives’ next moves, it’s clear that he’s in the zone – and his element – once the chase is on.
“The investigation and the operations is second nature and I love it,” he says. “And every single Hunter is 100 per cent committed to winning so it’s a good environment.”
Craig says that his stern, no-nonsense screen demeanour when he’s in command mode has sometimes surprised people when they meet the chatty, affable Chief in promotional mode.
“People say when I have been interviewed ‘you don’t seem like a bad guy to talk to’ and I say ‘yeah it’s because you’re not a fugitive’,” he says. “If you’re a criminal or a fugitive, then I am not a very nice person because I want to lock you up. But that’s not my real persona in normal life.”
The same goes for his quarry. The nature of the show is such that he has still never met any of the Fugitives from season one, and he doubts he’ll meet any from the new season either, but if he did he says “they would be welcome at my place for barbecue”.
“But when the game’s on,” he adds, “it’s no holds barred. Hatred is too strong a word but my determination to take them out is second to none.”
Craig says that he was impressed with the ingenuity of the Fugitives from the first season, particularly the use of “complicated communication strategies” (his particular area of expertise) and networks of friends. Because he only gets to see one side of the chase, he’s as fascinated as anyone to see the final show, including scenes where Fugitives escape by the skin of their teeth and others where the Hunters are hilariously off target.
But the new batch of Fugitives stood warned that their pursuers had learned from their mistakes and near misses from the first season and had taken action to stop history repeating. Technology, and how it dovetails with good, old-fashioned legwork, continues to evolve rapidly and Craig and his comrades are determined to remain at the cutting edge.
“Even from last year to this year, without going into any details, certain advancements that have been made,” he says. “And there’s some things that I want to try to employ for next season, if we are lucky enough to have a season three.”
This year’s Fugitives are a varied bunch who are “smarter and shiftier” than their predecessors and include army veterans, IT geeks, public servants, teachers, DJs and boxing coaches. Although some might seem more qualified to evade the Hunters for longer, Craig says that it’s “very dangerous to make a presumption like that”.
“People are quite surprising,” he says. “You could have some ex-military or ex-police officer that actually makes a silly mistake or does something that we know police do and it makes it very easy. But someone that is a complete beginner at this sort of thing with no exposure to law enforcement at all might be very good because they will be completely unpredictable and not do anything that we would expect them to do. It’s a good, level playing field.”
Craig, who says he’d hate to be a Fugitive on the show (“I’d get too paranoid, too quickly”), also believes there’s a practical aspect to the tech wizardry and sneaky tricks shown on Hunted. The idea that Big Brother might, in fact, be watching is alarming to some, who worry about the invasion of privacy, and comforting to others, who see the pivotal role that hi-tech surveillance plays in catching criminals.
“It gives people an idea of how to protect themselves,” he says. “If they want to be protected against Big Brother or hackers or someone that might have some ulterior motive or some hidden agenda for trying to find them, it probably gives them a little bit of an insight into that. I don’t think it helps criminals very much – I think any decent criminal knows these tricks anyway. For the average person that watches the show, if they can learn something to protect themselves better then that’s great.”
Hunted airs on Monday, 7.30pm, Channel 10
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Originally published as ‘Chief’ David Craig on criminals, reality-TV fatigue and upping the ante for season two of Hunted
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