With the show set to be aired in the U.S. from September 19, its creators have been beset by a barrage of complaints after one child received a burn to her face while cooking with hot fat in an unsupervised kitchen and four children were given medical treatment after drinking bleach. The concerns about the safety of the children, who were left to their own devices for 40 days, led the New Mexico Labour Board to take an interest in the filming, which finished in May. But an inspector was refused entry to the site, near Santa Fe, on two occasions.

Kid Nation takes Golding’s formula and gives it a contemporary Wild West twist. CBS took 40 children aged 8-15 and deposited them in Bonanza City, a derelict mining town in the New Mexico desert. The challenge for the kids was to create a functioning society, complete with a system of government, laws, commerce and, naturally, a class system.

Producers divided the children into four teams, which then competed to end up as “upper class” winners, “merchants,” “cooks” or “labourers.” At the end of each week a child was voted the winner of a gold star worth $20,000.

But while the programme makers will have hoped to produce a life-affirming espousal of the American way it has also led to controversy. As well as the incidents with the bleach and hot fat, CBS and the series production company, Good TV, countered suggestions that they were violating child labour laws. They argued that the children were not performing specific work for specific wages. The children awoke at 6 a.m. every day and typically worked 14 hours a day; they each received a $5,000 stipend.

New Mexico officials have said the makers of the programme did not obtain the correct permit, typically granted to children’s summer camps. “We wanted to provide for the safety of children,” a spokesman for the State Labour Department said. The show’s producer, Tom Foreman, told a news conference the children were not subject to the State laws because, “they were not working, they were participating.”

CBS offered interviews with parents of some of the children to endorse the claim that the experience was positive. “For her, it was just her normal every day,” the mother of one 12-year-old girl told the Los Angeles Times. “She feels like it was summer camp with cameras.” — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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