“In the end, there will only be one left!” Or two, or three… or 26! In 2023, 26 brave adventurers were crowned big winners of the television show Koh Lanta across the world. Abroad, the show is called Survivor (in Anglo-Saxon countries) or Robinson (in northern countries) but the principle is always more or less the same: strangers sent to a desert island must survive on their own, compete in numerous trials and… eliminate each other. The suspense is maximum – until the final, during which the winner is chosen by his former playmates.
The initial idea germinated in the mind of Charlie Parsons, a British television producer, at the end of the 1980s. “Originally, no one wanted it in Anglo-Saxon countries,” he recalls. , we went to see the major American channels but no one knew how to catalog the program… Was it a comedy? A television series at the time, reality TV didn’t exist.” Finally, a Swedish production company, met at a trade show in Cannes, was won over by the concept. The first season was broadcast in 1997 on the national public channel, SVT.
The birth of the popular phenomenon
The show immediately became a hit and spread throughout the world, first in Europe, then in the United States. It is there that we witness the birth of the popular phenomenon. At the end of August 2000, 52 million people – approximately 20% of the country’s total population – gathered to witness the victory of the very first American winner. These are the best audiences of the year (excluding the Superbowl). 45 happy adventurers will succeed him – soon 46 – and the producers of the show do not intend to stop there. In his podcast, the “American Denis Brogniart” suggested that they were already preparing an extraordinary fiftieth season for spring 2026.
“The strength of the concept is its universality,” points out Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini, associate researcher at the University of Lorraine. According to the media sociologist, “facing adversity, taking up sporting or human challenges, thwarting strategies to move forward… This speaks to everyone, because we all encounter obstacles in our private or professional sphere.” Charlie Parsons credits the success of his formula to the room for maneuver left to local production companies. “Each edition reflects a little of the culture of the country that produces them,” he says.
More than twenty-five years after the first episodes, the game has become essential. No matter where you are in the world, there is almost always a season airing. In France, with two editions of 16 episodes per year, two thirds of the weeks of the year are covered by the show. What does it matter if audiences decline timidly – the average number of spectators per season has fallen below 4 million in 2022 – Koh Lanta remains a pillar of the French small screen. A thirty-second edition is already in the pipeline.
.