Imagine ‘Survivor’ Without the Greed--It’s ‘Castaway’

At last: people plopped onto a remote island in a television series likely to appeal evento those fed up to here with Survivormania.

No torches. No melodramatic councils. No smarmy host. No Richard Hatch. Best of all, no shadowy conspiracies or visible greed. Instead of a million bucks, the potential payoff for these 28 adults and eight children--who began this adventure on New Year’s Eve, 1999--is a million memories.

Starting Monday on BBC America--which airs only British imports--is “Castaway,” which takes place mostly on the Hebridean island of Taransay, a forbidding slab, 3 miles long and 2 miles wide off the coast of Scotland. Winds blowing 120 mph in Taransay can put you on your butt, and 40-foot waves crash against the jagged coastline, making the sea impassable there for weeks at a time.

Living in this place is surviving.

Humans haven’t tried for some time. Fishermen and others abandoned this hostile, treeless rock 26 years ago, the BBC says, leaving it to deer and sheep until the Brits and TV cameras moved in for all of 2000. That’s right, not a measly 39 days as Robinson Crusoe on an exotic isle, a la “Survivor,” but a full 12 months isolated in terrain as punishing as it is ruggedly beautiful.

“Just look at the sky; it’s ours for a year,” exudes an arriving London stockbroker, dazzled by the sunrise in this gorgeously desolate, pristine setting. “Absolutely stunning,” says an artist fresh from Gloucestershire. “Awesome,” says her professor husband.

This being television, things turn out to be not quite as idyllic as they initially appear.

Just how many of Taransay’s new residents will stick it out under these conditions--slaughtering farm animals for food, using dry compost for toilets, battling the elements and trying to stay warm and dry in rudimentary new housing--remains to be seen. The simple life is a comical fit for some here, and one sequence, showing several city boys trying to build a pigpen, couldn’t be funnier if it were scripted.

Why the BBC’s “Castaway” over “Survivor” on CBS?

First, the similarities. The British castaways, too, were culled from the multitudes (4,000 applicants) and each granted one “luxury item” for this island stay. “If I can take my tampons, I go,” quips one finalist.

Like “Survivor,” this group includes an openly gay man (his T-shirt reading, “Closets are for clothes”) who becomes a source of controversy. There are personality clashes too. And like their U.S. counterparts, some of these castaways are destined for celebrityhood, based on public response to the series in the U.K., where it has been underway for some time.

But the tone of the two series is strikingly different.

Bitter disputes do knife through this infant community, but there are no scheming Iagos or Machiavellian alliances formed to undermine rivals en route to a fat check. Although some “Survivor” participants said the money was secondary, $1 million was the Bethlehem star guiding most of that crowd.

“Castaway,” on the other hand, is no game show incognito. Theoretically, competition would spell doom here, because everyone has to work together to survive, let alone flourish as a community in this harsh environment. As a group--from a volatile, heavy-drinking boss man to a soft-spoken pair of Seventh Day Adventists who feel like outsiders--these castaways are more interesting than contestants on “Survivor.”

They’re on this island either “for the hell of it,” as the BBC says, or for the sheer exhilaration. You can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices, feel it right through the TV screen. Just after arriving, for example, one woman in her 50s is already wondering how she’ll be able to sever herself from the island when the year expires. Perhaps she’ll change her mind.

In any case, Hatch will have his million and a book deal, while she may have something much richer.

The inclusion of couples and families with children also creates a different dynamic here, for rising from the ruin of an old schoolhouse overlooking the sea is a new one built just for these newcomers, although who will staff it remains a mystery. As is the apparent absence of a doctor later, when a flu epidemic breaks out.

“Castaway” seems much less mannered than “Survivor,” where you half expected “Fantasy Island’s” Tattoo to burst from the jungle shouting, “D’plane!” D’plane!”

At a group meeting, for example, some “Castaway” participants angrily share their grievances against Lion Scotland, the company producing this series for the BBC and, by the way, operating the very cameras recording this quasi-rebellion.

There is, as it turns out, much for the castaways to complain about regarding what awaits them on the island. Some of the preparations are inadequate, if not downright woeful, elevating the potential for misery.

Actually, much of the first four episodes takes place not on Taransay but in a separate lake area where finalists trying out for the series are shown undergoing rigorous physical tests that are closely studied by psychologist Cynthia McVey, who has that Joyce Brothers ambience of a pop shrink for hire. Observing also is Lofty Wiseman, an ex-military survivalist who’s a ringer for those stalwart British sergeants who toughen up the men before a big battle. In this case, that includes showing “Castaway” wannabes how to wring the neck of a chicken.

Some of what’s been said about “Castaway” is as pretentious as rhetoric defining “Survivor” as a seminal event of our time. The BBC series is being called a microcosm of the U.K., a “brave new world” and a “social experiment to build a new community.” Right. As long as scores of cameras and miles of TV cable don’t get in the way.

Mirroring “Survivor,” there are two societies on Taransay, the visible castaways and the unseen camera crews following them everywhere. This is not life monitored by TV but essentially life shaped by TV.

Yet within those contours, you can’t help thinking dreamily of the castaways and the sky that will be theirs for a year, while wondering what it would be like to join them beneath it.

* The first four episodes of “Castaway” will be shown Monday through Thursday throughout the evening beginning at 5 p.m. on BBC America; further episodes will follow later this fall.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column usually appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be contacted by e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.