The toughest game on earth. That's one of the hooks they're using for the latest season of Australian Survivor, and it's instructive.
Sure, it's tough. But it's also a game, and one of the great pleasures of last season was the way most players simultaneously took it seriously – and not.
Half a million dollars is a pretty heavy incentive but if there was something that distinguished our version from the rest it was the irrepressible good humour and basic decency that flavoured the action.
Of course, the first season of any reality franchise is always a bit special. Everyone's feeling their way. No one – including us – quite knows what to expect.
But the second season? Well, there are certainly lessons to be learned.
For viewers, the editing and culling process is a little more transparent. The majority of the people who figure large in the first few episodes will not make it past the halfway mark. Most won't make it to episode five. Initially insignificant figures (like Kristie last year) will emerge more gradually.
In theory we should all also have a better idea about which strategies work in the Aussie setting and which don't. Although on the evidence of this first episode, I'm not sure some of these contestants have been paying attention.
Lesson number one, surely, was that people who tell barefaced lies don't prosper. Closely related is lesson number two: don't rush into allegiances or pledge eternal support. And lesson number three? Keep your mouth shut and your eyes – and ears – open.
It's well worth thinking about the qualities of the person who did win last season. She was humble, unostentatiously tough, fair-minded, and didn't speak up until it was necessary – but when she did speak up she made it count. (The way Kristie completely psyched Lee out during that final immunity challenge was a work of art. And as for her final pitch to the jury? Wow).
On the evidence so far, I reckon a good third of this year's players just cannot have been watching last season.
For instance, we've all seen Henry the "yoga instructor" in the promos: actually a labourer who for some reason thinks creating an entirely fictitious persona and then trying to maintain it for two months is actually going to work. The fact that Sarah the model is a yoga devotee and is thrilled to have an instructor on the island doesn't bode well for a start.
Some of the young women seem to think they're still in Year 11, an environment where making snide comments about your classmates while they're within earshot counts as a "power play". Ladies? You're not at Summer Heights High any more.
And then there's poor, deluded A.K., the wedding DJ and "superfan". His teammates have barely finished tying their bandanas when he embarks on a round of urgent whispering, assuring assorted parties he really, really likes them and is going to back them all the way to the end. As most of these people are still struggling to remember each other's names, it feels a tad premature.
But that's all part of the fun.
As is simply seeing the way the various personalities interact – when they're fresh, and then whey they're exhausted, hungry, homesick and stinky. It's one of the key elements that keeps Survivor so compelling.
Even more than last year, a good cohort of participants are as funny as they are self-aware. There are some lovely little poignant moments (lookin' at you, Luke). And some magnificent bumbling and bungling.
There seems to be a better feel for the ratio of talk to action this season too.
Last year some of those challenges felt interminable (and you felt for Jonathan La Paglia, having to maintain an enthusiastic commentary throughout). In this first episode we squeeze three challenges – one of them deliriously chaotic – into the one show, along with some deliciously amateurish strategising and the necessary getting-to-know-you stuff.
There are plenty of nubile, semi-naked bodies. There are some freaks and geeks. There's a handful of middle-aged interlopers. And overseeing it all, LaPaglia's slightly sinister ringmaster.
Sweet, salty, sour; creamy and crunchy: to borrow a phrase from Ten's other big reality franchise, so far this dish is perfectly balanced.
Survivor Australia (new season) premieres on Ten, Sunday, 7.30pm.