Sixteen average folks must join forces, and avoid getting stabbed in the back, to haul a million bucks up the New Zealand Alps in CBS’s new reality battle
Who has the courage, the stamina and the smarts to reach the top? Viewers are about to find out, as CBS and its sister streamer Paramount+ debut gruelling new reality competition The Summit on Sunday (with the premiere then reairing on CBS and CTV this Wednesday, before settling into its permanent Wednesday-night slot with new episodes starting on October 9). Based on a hit Australian show (which airs on Discovery in Canada), the 16 adventurous contestants start as strangers toting backpacks that contain a share of $1 million in prize money. They must then endure the often-punishing environment of the New Zealand Alps to reach a high mountain peak and claim the cash.
Holding to genre tradition, alliances and eliminations are all in the game as a mercurial figure known only as the Mountain’s Keeper springs surprises en route to try to thwart the players. Actor Manu Bennett (Spartacus, Arrow) is the host.
“We wanted different body types and different ages, all regular Americans, to be able to achieve this,” says executive producer Kevin Lee, whose other credits include reality battle The Challenge. “But, we also wanted it to be really hard and to put pressure on them to make difficult decisions. We did our best to estimate a course that would take 14 days, and part of the decision-making is those obstacles.
“On a normal show, you have challenges that are built by the TV show,” Lee notes. “On this show, we have obstacles that serve some of the same purposes, but they’re natural obstacles. Part of the route-choosing was to go near good obstacles and also to be in scenic areas, but at the end of the day, the most important thing was that normal Americans from different backgrounds could achieve it in 14 days . . . even with the annoying producer stopping them to do interviews often.”
Unlike Survivor, which has host Jeff Probst guiding Tribal Councils that result in dismissals of players, The Summit lets the contestants run their own elimination meetings. “I think it made them feel like they’re a group of people around a campfire, sharing their opinions,” Lee reflects, “and it kind of lowered the TV pressure of it all. And to be completely honest, we’re on the side of a mountain, so it’s very hard to get all the infrastructure that we normally have up there. That was part of the reason why we ran a skeleton crew and let them run their own votes.”
The producer admits that applicants weren’t informed fully of what they might be getting into when they signed up for The Summit. As he explains: “They felt that they were applying for a show that was kind of an adventure race. They were told, even in their contract, ‘You’ve got to be ready to trek long distances, climb hills, rappel down cliffs, cross streams, climb through snow’ — all of that sort of stuff, but they were never told the word ‘mountain.’ They were prepared for everything that they would face, but they just didn’t know that they had to get to the top of a mountain to achieve the million dollars.”
The Summit premieres Sunday, September 29 on CBS and Wednesday, October 2 on CTV & CBS