One of the latest reality competition series on Netflix, Siren: Survive the Island hosts 6 teams of 4 contestants, all female, coming each from 6 different professions: Police, Firefighters, Soldiers, Guards, Athletes, and Stunt Performers. Each of these teams must survive on the island competing challenges for 1 week, the winning claiming themselves the champions and taking home the prize. Honestly looking back I'm still unsure what the prize was, but it really doesn't matter as the games in this series are the real treat. It's quite difficult to create games that will pan out long term, not be too complex in rules, and still be entertaining to watch, but I will say the series does a good job. The games can be confusing themselves, they spend some time going over the guidelines, however underlying the surface is a complex rule set that it seems only the contestants themselves saw the full scope of. The gist being each teams gets a "base" in which they can store their minimal gear and sleep. In each base must be stored a team flag which if captured during the once-a-day "base battle", that team loses, and the capturing team now gains control of that base. During said base battles each team member has a flag strapped to their back that if pulled out that player also loses, and must wait until that base battle is over before re-joining their team. These base battles are the means of eliminating contestants and eventually claiming winners. Secondarily, there are a few arena games, all themselves with special rules and gameplay which I wont get into, but those typically award advantages to the winning team in the subsequent base battles. Finally, theres a store where players can use up calories burned each day as "currency" (tracked via what looked like apple watches on everyone's wrist), which could be used for basics like food, to tools like shovels, to defences like smoke bombs. All of this complexity certainly adds to the drama when done correctly, however at only 10 episodes typically shorter than 40 minutes I was found wanting more content, even just the mundane planning or conversations in the bases, I would be much enjoyed that rather than things feeling over-cut and fast paced. All in all, it was fun, I had favourites, and I will certainly return for season 2, which they heavily implied was coming. Netflix described the series as "Survivor meets Physical: 100", which got it to the top of my list and honestly felt like a good description. Would recommend.
Review of Siren: Survive the Island
