Off-Topic: The irresistible Australian Survivor

I'd never watched Survivor before and it's only now that I realise why: it didn't do very well in the UK in the early noughties so it disappeared. That explains it. But while it flopped here, it soared elsewhere, and so it was, as a complete newbie to the series, I recently found myself watching the 2019 Australian Survivor series on Amazon Prime. And it absolutely blew me away.

It is perfect. Now, I don't know if that's because I happened upon a particularly golden series (pun intended for those in the know), or whether I reacted in this way because it was all so new to me. Maybe it's just Australians being brilliant at reality TV. But this show has everything.

There's the immediate hook of having two teams of people who need to survive on a desert island near Fiji for about a month, if they last that long. They only get some rice to eat and have to forage the rest, and they have to make their own shelters. They are not nice conditions to live in. They are tired, they are hungry, they are cold. Humour fades fast. It's fascinating.