Introducing Discovery’s New Survival Series, ‘The Wheel’

Discovery’s newest survival series will not have participants naked, but they will likely be afraid.

The Wheel, premiering Jan. 13, dares six people to survive in six different landscapes over the course of 60 days in South America: The Amazon Rainforest (“Poison dart frogs, flesh-hungry crocodiles, curare plants that paralyze the respiratory system,” the network teases); Wetlands (“home to a staggering variety of deadly plants and wildlife”); Bush Plains (“land of jaguars, lagoons, dust and eagles, it is both feared and esteemed by hunters”); Mountains (“teeming with glaciers, gushing rivers and snowed [sic] mountains”); Tundra (“the unrelenting gusty wind and baron [sic] landscape … make an incredibly difficult place to source food and shelter”); and Island (“This painfully desolate environment will drive survivalists to the brink of madness”).

Why is the show called The Wheel? “Unbeknownst to them, the wheel is a mechanism that mirrors the lunar calendar. With every phase of the moon, the wheel will turn and send each person to a new eco-zone,” the network says. “The amount of time at each location is revealed only to viewers, leaving the survivors to agonize and obsess over when the wheel will spin again. As every rotation thrusts them — without warning — into a new harrowing domain, participants are completely at the wheel’s mercy.”

The good news: Participants do get to carry light survival packs and SOS devices, which can be used to quit or call for help.

The Wheel premieres Jan. 13 at 10 p.m. on Discovery.