When you think TV and water, you might first think of “Baywatch.” Here’s a better option, a televised experiment in social Darwinism that will also utilize beach settings.
Nobody knows yet if “Survivor” is going to be good television, but it’s certainly an interesting concept and another notch in the TV-as-voyeur bedpost. In March, CBS stuck 16 ordinary Americans on an otherwise deserted island in the South China Sea where for 39 days they had to try to form a cooperative and primitive (except for all the video cameras, of course) society. But the most important thing is that, over the course of the series, which premieres in June, the contestants had to vote each week on whom to send off the island, with the sole survivor taking the $1 million prize. In other words, it’s a popularity contest but, unlike high school, one that will likely be based on being useful and decent, or at least greedy enough that you are able to seem useful and decent for a short time.
