What is with all the glorification of Pirate lore and culture these days?
Mark Burnett - © Glenn Harris / Photorazzi
"Pirates of the Caribbean" meets "Survivor" and voila , Mark Burnett has birthed yet another reality show for your enjoyment.
This new reality series is the most recent flotsam and jetsam to wash ashore tonight on CBS.
arggghhh
What is it, you ask? There are 16 contestants, a million-dollar treasure and the constant possibility of mutiny.
"It's a very sexy thing," says "Master" host Cameron Daddo inan interview with USA Today. "We all love freedom. We all love the idea of maybe breaking a few rules and getting away with it. And let's face it, pirates are the original bad boys."
The details: Eight men and eight women joined Daddo in the Caribbean around the island of Dominica for 33 days aboard a 179-foot pirate ship.
No free rides, as they compete in tough physical challenges and mental tasks each week to win up to $500,000 in gold coins and the right to be captain.
The finale will see the winner sail away with a lump sum - the other half of the treasure - of $500,000.
"Here we are with the same amount of prize money as 'Survivor,'" says Daddo about the program, which airs tonight at 8. "But in our show, that million dollars is spread across four weeks, so everyone has the opportunity to leave with money."
CBS describes the contestants living on the high seas are a publicity agent, a beauty queen, a "land pirate" (Laurel, who Daddo says "lives in a van in various parking lots") and ex-NFL player Christian Okoye."He's a definite standout," says Daddo of Okoye. "He's a strong, silent presence on the show."
Daddo claims piratey lineage of his own. "My grandfather told me last year, 'Son, you're a pirate!' He says we were descendants of the Spanish pirates who came down through Cornwall in Ireland."
"It's high adventure that they're on this pirate ship, and there's actual money being discovered in the form of gold every week," as opposed to a single winner-take-all payout, Burnett says to USA.
Defamer.com muses that "if audiences respond favorably to ritual elements of game play like deck-scrubbing and plank-walking, producers will likely choose to incorporate even more authentic pirate fun into the proceedings, pitting team against team in exciting events like the Chevy Blazer Torch n' Rape Challenge."
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