It’s been shot in Fiji. It’s been shot in Tonga. It hasn’t been shot in Samoa, possibly because the guy who actually wrote Treasure Island is buried there and the sound of him spinning in his mountain grave would ruin the shot.
But now, after Covid-era shows on a bleak and windy Northland beach, Celebrity Treasure Island is back on an island. As the publicity says, it’s on the island of “Te Wai Pounamu”. Yes, the biggest, highest, most telegenic and second-most populated of the isles of Aotearoa.
Te Wai Pounamu residents have long welcomed screen productions for the income and tourism marketing it brings to their remote paradise. And, of course, our television programmes have long been popular there.
The news that CTI this year features four former stars of Shortland Street – they’re a bit behind so they probably still feature in current episodes – is likely to cause something akin to Beatlemania in Arrowtown, a place more used to the hum of the local market where the locals eke out a living by selling their wares (such as “wild venison salami” and “merino throw rugs”) between rounds of a traditional stick game (“golf”).
The South Island, as some of its native residents call it during traditional evening fireside ceremonies drinking of the “pinot” in their quaint huts made of schist and Colorsteel after a hard day’s bungy jumping, also offers new possibilities that no previous CTI has had. Possibilities such as hypothermia, avalanches, sheep-themed challenges and having a vicious local parrot (“kea”) attack the crew’s gear. Also, possibilities of having this survival show interrupted by other survival shows shooting nearby.
Like that one with Vinnie Jones melting local glaciers with his glower or the Aussie one with backpacks full of money. And of course, it also offers the possibility that has always been a mark of many recent Celebrity Treasure Islands – that some people in it who aren’t really celebrities might be one when they finish. Oh, and that someone’s chosen charity gets $100,000.
That publicity says the “treasure” hunt is themed on some stolen loot buried in colonial gold-rush times. That’s the era that featured in The Luminaries, the finishing reading of which producers are said to be keeping up their sleeve as a tiebreaker. The publicity also suggests that while Te Wai Pounamu may actually be the 12th-biggest of the world’s non-continental islands, CTI will be using only some nice inland bits of its 146,000sq km. Apparently, it was shot last summer in the atoll of “Central Otago”, which must be slightly galling for the show’s dumped host Matt Chisholm, who lives there.
But his young replacement, Jayden Daniels, will reteam with Bree Tomasel in a reality show that features no less than two winners of previous reality shows (The Bachelor’s Matilda Green and Dancing with the Stars’ Jazz Thornton). As well, there’s the aforementioned Shortie contingent, four comedians, one current Lotto presenter, the mandatory former member of TrueBliss, three presenter-broadcasters not presenting much other than corporate gigs, one actual Lion King (theatre star Nick Afoa. That’ll be him standing on the schist rock outcrop), one Warriors captain (Steve Price) and the Muru film star much acclaimed for his portrayal of Tāme Iti, Tāme Iti.
Well, he has done time in prison (it was all a terrible misunderstanding) so the deprivations of the wilds of Wānaka should be a breeze. He’s got bushcraft skills and is a shoo-in for anything requiring artistic talent or flag shooting. And when it comes to recovering things stolen in colonial times, well, he just might have a different take.
Celebrity Treasure Island, TVNZ 2, 7.30pm, Monday to Wednesday from September 18; TVNZ+
