Throng

SERIES

SURVIVOR: CHINA

Thursday December 6th at 8:30pm

Reward Challenges. Contestants being exiled to entirely separate islands with nothing but a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Castaways backstabbing each other. This series of Survivor is truly one to be remembered. The series screens on Thursdays at 8:30pm on 3.

Ask host Jeff Probst about Survivor: China, and he’ll tell you why it’s such a unique destination and season for the Survivor series.

“China brings new culture; we've been in the South Pacific for quite a while and in all areas, China is exciting from a creative point of view," Probst told Reality TV World.

"It gave us different things to draw on, different inspirations in terms of challenges, and it gave us a different visual pallet to work with, different colours. This culture that dates back 5,000 years gives you so much to drawn from, we really have a fresh season. Survivor looks different again... For several seasons in a row it visually looked somewhat the same: palm trees and coconuts. We have bamboo and temples this time. I think the audience can feel the difference."

One of those differences is that Survivor: China does not feature an Exile Island concept. Instead, the tribe that wins each Reward Challenge is allowed to "kidnap" a member of the losing tribe. The kidnapped tribe member will remain with the other tribe until the next Immunity Challenge, at which time they will rejoin their original tribe.

"I think it works better. The problem we had with Exile Island - and not to say it won't come back, but if it does, we will hopefully do it in a different form - but the problem with Exile Island was you only have one person on the island, and it's sort of basic reality, basic storytelling," says Probst.

Probst also added that he feels the "kidnapping" concept works really well.

"It takes one person from one group and forces them into another, and they're carrying with them some very valuable information, so it's even more complicated," he explains.

"To complicate it further nobody knows what the information is because it's sort of in the form of a secret. That works better because you get a chance to spy or be spied on. Maybe the person who goes over gives away too much information, maybe they give away bad information, maybe the tribe that they visit puts on a show to let them think they're not getting along... There's just a lot more opportunities for deception."

Don’t miss all this deception as well as all the other havoc wreaked on the remaining castaways in Survivor: China, screening Thursday, December 6th at 8:30pm on 3.