I was several floors up in a burning high-rise, trapped with hundreds of other panicked co-workers who couldn’t find an easy escape. The halls were filling with smoke, as were the stairwells, so I took the only obvious way out. I stepped into an elevator — and plummeted to a fiery, premature death.
Or so it was meant to seem. In truth, I was just acting. I was an extra on the set of an elaborate pyrotechnic simulation that makes up the escape-from- fire episode of the Spike TV show “Surviving Disaster.”
The latest high-octane infotainment program to hit the testosterone-fueled cable network, “Surviving Disaster” is half reality TV, half scripted narrative — a program that takes advantage of high anxiety and enthusiasm for preparedness while striving to live up to its name. Scary times, it seems, beget scary programming — only, with this show, there’s a twist.
“What we’re aiming to be is empowering,” said Sharon Levy, senior vice president of development for Spike’s alternative programming.
“Do not be afraid. Do not shrink in the corner and cover your eyes and hope for the best.”
The program originally was titled “Surviving Terrorism,” but that al- Qaeda-esque idea was chucked in favor of a show “that was broad enough to encapsulate all of the types of disasters that you would have to face,” Levy said.
So, in addition to an episode that shows viewers how to survive a dirty bomb, they’ll get action-packed tutorials in how to live through hurricanes, earthquakes, airplane hijackings, avalanches — and fires.
“Surviving Disaster” uses “dramatic reconstructions” for most of the action. Produced by Britain-based company Wall to Wall (which won an Oscar earlier this year for its documentary “Man on Wire”), the show was designed to “look a little bit like a CNN reporter who’s embedded in Baghdad with the war going on around him,” said Alex Graham, the Wall to Wall chief executive who is executive producing “Surviving Disaster.”
Instead of that CNN reporter, viewers of Spike’s latest get Cade Courtley — a charismatic former Navy SEAL with Paul Newman eyes and clubs for biceps.
Courtley’s job is to present information, which he does with masculine, yet actorly, aplomb.
There’s also expert commentary. Intercut with dramatic simulations of derring-do, there’s real footage of real disasters and the real people who’ve survived them, apparently in an effort to put more “real” in this reality show designed to blur the lines between entertainment and useful information.
