Gilligan's Island Spawned A Forgotten, Survivor-Style Reality Show

There seems to be an entire subgenre of reality television devoted to watching otherwise privileged people survive or pretend to survive desert island conditions. The first big show to play with the concept was "Survivor," which became wildly successful and is still airing in 2024. "Survivor" is essentially a complicated tabletop game that takes place on a desert island and with a big cash prize on the line, though no one is actually truly fighting to survive. Contrast that with something like "Naked and Afraid" or "Alone," which put people into actual survival situations, leading to some truly dangerous and terrifying moments, and you can see the incredible range of this subgenre of reality TV. But did you know that once upon a time, there was a reality competition based on the classic TV series "Gilligan's Island?"

I'm sure plenty of people over the years have wondered how things would go for real-world versions of the crew of the ill-fated Minnow, and their questions were sort of answered when TBS created "The Real Gilligan's Island" in 2004. "Gilligan's Island" has always been popular in some form (it even had two animated spin-offs!), and "Survivor" was fairly freshly blowing up in popularity, so a "Gilligan's Island" reality series made a lot of sense. So, what happened, and why was this series lost and forgotten?

"The Real Gilligan's Island" featured a cover of the original "Gilligan's Island" theme song by the band Bowling for Soup (remember "Stacy's Mom"?), and it tried to mimic the look and feel of the classic 1960s show in as many ways as possible. The show ran for two seasons, and in each season there were 14 contestants on two teams, with the seven contestants of each team chosen to represent one of the characters from "Gilligan's Island." Each team had a Gilligan, a Skipper, the Millionaire and his Wife, a Movie Star, a Professor, and a Mary Ann, who had to compete in challenges to prove which was the best of the pair. Once the contestants were all whittled down to just one of each character, the show became a loose version of "Survivor" in "Gilligan's Island" cosplay.

"Ginger," the Movie Star, was portrayed by professional actors. In season 1, "Baywatch" star Nicole Egger competed with rising New Zealand actor Rachel Hunter, while in season 2 "Baywatch" star Erika Eleniek competed with "Tales From the Crypt: Bordello of Blood" star Angie Everhart. Unfortunately, the show was pretty forgettable and too much like "Survivor" to, well, survive, and TBS canceled it after just two seasons. It's not available online and it's hard to even find images from the series, but thankfully the show that inspired it is much easier to find and you can stream "Gilligan's Island" for free. Oh well, maybe one day the network powers that be will try again and we'll get "The New Real Gilligan's Island," but with "Love Island" vibes.