I’ve been on a bit of a documentary kick lately, and recently discovered Living in the Past. One of the first reality TV shows, it was a 12-episode BBC series which documented the experience of 15 young Britons living for a year as Iron Age men and women. They built their own houses, grew their own food, slaughtered their own animals and so forth.
I watched a kind of one-hour summary of the show courtesy of a BBC4 show called What Happened Next? I guess when you’re as big and old as the Beeb, you can produce a show that’s entirely about the future of other past shows.
In any case, I really enjoyed this documentary, despite nobody being kicked off the island. You can watch the whole hour-long show on YouTube:
DarrenBarefoot.com 
The Up series predates it. It was also from the BBC, first broadcast in 1964.
It documented the lives of 14 7-year-old children across multiple classes in Britain and followed up with them every 7 years after (at 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, and 49 years of age).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Series