Have your first bisexual hot tub experience in Vegas. Bare your tits at Spring Break. Compete, cavil and backstab for the chance to work for a puckered, combed-over megalomaniac. Humiliate yourself to a soundtrack in front of Paula Abdul. And now — go to Israel and try to make it as a Zionist! Ha’olim (“The Immigrants”) is a new reality series set to debut in Israel as The Real World with hummus. According to The Forward, "Far from the hard, hand-to-mouth existence of early Zionist pioneers, the winner will receive what producers call a 'golden ticket' to Israel, including a luxury beachfront apartment in Tel Aviv, a brand-new car and a well-paying job." If you will it, it is no dream. Since most American reality series began in some form or another overseas (Survivor was Australian, Idol was British first), and since there's now a meta ABC monstrosity called I Survived a Japanese Game Show, we though we'd give you other international examples of exploitative prime time programming.

Behind the Glass. Russia's first reality TV show, a transparent (har!) knockoff of Big Brother, in which six men and women, aged 21-24, live in a glass apartment in Moscow and are filmed by 26 cameras. Passersby on the street were charged 20 roubles to look in on the live performances, or they could order video copies from their local secret police headquarters. Intentionally not all that different from monitored life under the Soviet Union, as one of the series' producers said she got the idea after reading Zamyatin's dystopian novel We (forerunner of 1984). Featured a circus performer named Anatoly and a lesbian personal trainer named Olga. Season two was subtitled "The Last Beef Steak" (also the title of Vladimir Putin's forthcoming memoir) because everyone had to come together to start a food business. Given the cost of fine dining in Moscow, this may be interpreted as the country's way of embracing its economic boom and preparing the next generation of post-Communists for the blessings of middle-class capitalism. Oh, and when two contestants fucked, it was recorded and broadcast in infrared.

The Prince of Poets. Hosted in the United Arab Emirates, this literary spin on American Idol had 4,000 poets apply to read their work, improvise verse, and discuss women's rights, democracy and other political issues while being judged by a panel of discriminating poets and scholars. 35 were accepted. The winner received regional glory and 1,000,000 UAE Dirhams ($270,000). Some poets were more engaged than others — popular tropes including bashing Israel and the Iraq War. Hamas and Fatah openly supported one Palestinian-Egyptian participant, Tamim Al-Barghouti, whose "In Jerusalem" was about everything you'd expect it to be about. (YouTube of him here.) Poetry is huge in the Middle East, as evidenced by how Palestinian bard Mahmoud Darwish fills huge stadiums for his recitations the way T.S. Eliot once did here. Culturally sounder than, say, diving into a tank of fire ants. If this series were adapted for the U.S. today, it'd be a televised blog-off.

Desafio 10. A Guatemalan Big Brother mixed with Scared Straight in which 10 strangers live in a house and study accounting, marketing and customer service — except they're all former members of the bloodiest gangs in the Americas. One participant told the Washington Post, "Society used to discriminate against us but now that so many have seen that we are willing to make an effort ... many people are supporting us." Yeah, but don't discount the voyeurism of rehabilitation. People outwardly cheer for good behavior but secretly pine for brawling and recidivism. Whatever happens, the audience wins.

[The Forward]