You guys! I found the perfect TV show to binge during lockdown

Can we go back to level four so we all have time to watch it please?

Jeff Probst stands on a tiny tropical island shaped like a clitoris.

He’s alone, holding a flag, wearing sneakers, a black-and-white cap, and a deep blue shirt with so many massive pockets it might have had a previous life as cargo pants.

The same shit-eating grin he’s been using for 20 years is smeared across his face.

“This is awesome,” he bellows, as 20 former $1 million Survivor prizewinners crash onto the beach, spilling out of a raft. They look much older, greyer and paunchier than their heyday in the reality show spotlight.

Probst welcomes them in, hands them all a glass of champagne, and, using an incredibly dodgy German accent, declares: “A drink before war is always a good idea.”

Aside from his terrible accent, it’s what Probst does next that’s really shocking: he tells the contestants to “get rid of that” and throws his champagne flute over his shoulder, onto an otherwise pristine golden beach that’s gleaming in sparkling sunlight.

Only a long-running American reality show could make me this mad, and this happy, in just a handful of seconds.

I’m mad, because the 20-strong cast that makes up Survivor’s latest season are based in Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands, and it’s the last place in the world anyone should be encouraged to casually throw rubbish over their shoulders.

But I’m also happy, because I’ve finally found something worth binge-watching during lockdown.

I tried, I really did. I searched high and low. I gave Alex Garland’s mesmerising Devs a go, and struggled to find a way through its brain-twisting schematics. I tried Upload, the new comedy from Greg Daniels, and didn’t find a single lol.

John Oliver tried his best, but even he couldn’t find the funny in the pandemic in Last Week Tonight. Don’t get me started on The Outsider. Everyone involved in that show should be arrested and charged with criminal misuse of the brilliant Aussie actor Ben Mendelsohn.

So here we are. It’s Survivor’s fortieth season, which is just plain crazy. No TV show gets to last for 40 seasons, and nor should they. It seems starving a bunch of scheming Americans and putting them on television is the trick to reality TV success.

This time around, they’re bringing back former winners of the show, and holy hell, do these guys know how to play the game. Even if you’ve only seen one season, you’ll already know the names: Boston Rob, Amber, Parvati, Sandra, and my personal fave, Tyson.

I remember all of these people. In a former life, I spent several years interviewing every single contestant in every single season of Survivor. I’d get weekly phone calls from a nice woman at CBS then talk buffs and beans with each of them, and turn those yarns into online clickbait of the best kind.

I loved it. It was like deep diving into a secret cult and getting to talk to its members each week. We’d talk about different manoeuvres, dodgy tactics, dirty gameplay, and how and why they got voted off. They were always bitter, so they were always great interviews.

One of them told me their first post-Survivor snack was scooping peanut butter out of the jar using squares of chocolate, and now it’s my favourite treat too.

Recently, though, I’d stopped watching. I wasn’t doing the interviews anymore. Anyway, that happens when a show gets to its fortieth season. You physically can’t see them all. There’s not enough time. It would take months of doing nothing else.

But then the lockdown happened, and Survivor’s time seems to have come back around. It just ticks so many boxes. For anyone missing international travel and island adventures, it captures Fiji’s outer islands in gleaming high-def glory.

If you’re missing sport, Survivor’s full of egotistical American playing ridiculous made-up games involving posts and rings and stamina and eating awful food. They’re all hungry, and they’re all mad as hell.

It’s pure comfort viewing, brain candy of the best possible kind. I had no intention of watching a show called Winners at War. I didn’t think I wanted to see something with an island on it called Edge of Extinction.

I thought I was done with Jeff Probst quotes like, “Come on in, guys!” and, “The tribe has spoken.” I thought I didn’t need to see him snuff yet another torch.

But right now, that’s all I want to do. Against all the odds, Survivor is the show we need for these pandemic times. I’m bingeing the hell out of this. As long as they don’t biff any more rubbish on the beach, I’m all in.

• Thanks for reading! If you want more, I interviewed a bunch of Shortland Street’s cast and crew about how they’re shooting sex scenes in the age of isolation. You can read it over at The Spinoff.