Pirate Master Details Unveiled

Mark Burnett is adding to his empire, slowly but surely. Poised to become the Aaron Spelling of reality television, the man behind Survivor, The Apprentice and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? is ready to unleash his newest show on the public. Pirate Master premieres on May 31 (on CBS, of course) and will be hosted by Australian actor/musician Cameron Daddo (Big Momma's House 2). The 13-episode series stars "16 people who all agree that had they been born 250 years ago, they would have liked to be pirates," as Burnett told TV Guide recently, from the set on the Caribbean island of Dominica.

Contestants live on a 179-foot-square rigger for 33 days while searching for buried treasure worth $1 million. Burnett said that the game stems from a mythical pirate story he came up with, "Captain Steel."

"Each man returned to the ship with a set of maps and hid them in a chest with 14 compartments, and it was only a few weeks ago that the chest was recovered," he said. "So the contestants are sailing to a different destination each week around the island looking for the treasure."

"It's a huge — and hard — adventure, with jumping off waterfalls, swimming up canyon lakes and crossing mud-filled jungles," Burnett says. The show's motto? "Watch your back." As Burnett notes, "Pirates have their own rules, and while they need to work as a group on the expeditions, you never know who's going to stab you in the back."

Contestants dress in period costumes, eat gruel and are ruled by an elected captain who can be overthrown if he doesn't treat his crew well. Each week at "Pirate's Court" — which are, according to Burnett, modeled after actual tribunals — a player is cast off the ship and set adrift on a raft. "If you can't run with the crew, if you can't swim or row or navigate, you're a liability."

The pirate crew is made up of eight men and eight women. Among them: "a very tough Nigerian who became an American and a former Navy rescue swimmer, who's currently a smoke jumper. Everybody's a good athlete, but what they've learned is that to be a great pirate, you have to be really smart."

"It's a lot of fun, a great summer yarn. It's fantasy meets reality," says Burnett, who wrote the show back in 2003, adding "It's a big endeavor to pull off."

Photo from TV Guide.