A play-by-play breakdown of the new Celebrity Treasure Island teaser

Tara Ward savours every delicious detail of our first look at the new season.

TVNZ just dropped a sneak peek at the new season of Celebrity Treasure Island, and hold on to your budgie smugglers me hearties, it’s GOOD. We already knew about the celebrities favourite chip flavours and song choices, but this trailer teases a season that’s fizzing with tension, tears and trouble. It’s a glimpse into a beachy paradise where challenges are fought and alliances are made, and where the entire future of the competition hangs on Dr Grace Kwan’s blow-up coat hanger.

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If the teaser is this good, imagine what the rest of the season will be like. This group of fresh-faced New Zealand celebrities are larking it up on a Northland beach to win $100,000 for their chosen charity, but they might have also made the best season of CTI yet. Let’s dive headfirst into this buffet of reality TV goodness and chew this masterpiece over, frame by delicious frame.

0:20 Welcome to the White Lotus

Our CTI journey begins with a spooky story about a plane that crashed on a mysterious island, its cargo lost forever. The story is narrated by science’s gift to reality television Dr Joel Rindelaub, and the mood is dark and intense. There are crypts, and more teeth than you would expect.

0.33 This is not intense

The sequel to The Notebook takes an early turn (Screengrab: TVNZ)

Just three celebrities sitting on a log, reading a jolly tale handwritten with a ye olde “pen” in an old fashioned “notebook”. Better living, celebrities.

0.39 Hosts Bree Tomasel and Matt Chisholm are back

Mum and Dad welcome us back to the beach of dreams. Nothing about this quest will be familiar, Matt promises, even though they appear to be standing on the same beach as last year. Matt wears a lovely tropical shirt.

0.59 Comedian Guy Montgomery declares CTI is “pilots over pirates, baby”

It’s that classic battle between sea and sky, hearts and minds, planes and boats. Only one gets into the Koru Club for free, the other is forced to befriend parrots and say “arrr, matey” a lot. Live, laugh, love, the lot of you.

1.05 Karen O’Leary asks the age old question: “celebrities?”

A New Zealand celebrity in the wild (Screengrab: TVNZ)

Karen O’Leary opens an early can of worms by questioning the concept of “celebrities”, chucking in some devastating finger air quotes for good measure. We all love watching celebrities at the beach, but CTI is all aboard the self-deprecation train, eating itself from the inside by questioning its own relevance before a single episode has even washed up on our shores. Who said reality TV couldn’t be deep?

1.08 New Zealand celebrity Guy Montgomery also appears to struggle with the concept of “New Zealand celebrity”

I mean, we get it. Are you actually a New Zealand celebrity if we all went to school with your cousin? If a New Zealand celebrity falls in the forest and no other New Zealand celebrity hears it, does it even make a sound? It’s a lot of existential angst this early in a three minute, 15 second gift from the TV gods.

1.14 Karen O’Leary makes a shocking announcement

“Celebrities often are talking absolute garbage,” O’Leary reveals. I want to believe her, but she’s a celebrity. Yet again, CTI is a riddle wrapped in an enigma tucked under Dr Joel’s mullet.

1.16 A celebrity talks absolute garbage

He’s just a celebrity, sitting on a beach, asking his beans to love him.

1.17 Lynette Forday introduces us to her inflatable coat hanger

The future is amazing. Inflatable coat hangers? A celebrity talking garbage? Consider that coat hanger – and my mind – officially blown.

1.21 Courtenay Louise plays her hand early

“From now on, I’m going to shut my mouth and keep everything to myself,” the Shortland Street star vows. It’s a great tactic until the curse of the CTI sheep jaw strikes again, and Courtenay and Cassie Roma provide us with this private, extremely confidential, never to be seen by the viewing public moment.

1.45 “This year, there are a few surprises”

Alas, the surprise Bree Tomasel refers to isn’t discovering which cracks the sand gets into at the beach, but our first glimpse of celebrity intruders Mike King, Dame Susan Devoy and Ron Cribb. The trailer cuts to Lynette Forday – aka Grace Kwan from Shortland Street – laughing like the menopausal women of New Zealand have never laughed before, looking like she’s enjoying a real holiday on a real deserted island and not this hectic hellfire of deflating coat hangers and menopausal mayhem.

2.05 Mike King claims to be the only celebrity in New Zealand

Hold the pirate phone Mike, there must be enough room on that island for all these slightly famous New Zealanders. Is this another absolute garbage claim, or are we staring truth in the eye and watching the world fold in on itself? The sheep skull declined to comment.

2.12 Personalities collide

Iyia Liu accuses Lynette Forday of cheating. Maybe it’s during a challenge, maybe Iyia found out Lynette got someone else to finish blowing up her coat hanger. Either way, the next few seconds are tense, with contestants crashing into each other, Lynette looking cross and Mike King announcing “I’ll be the bad guy! I don’t care!”, which is exactly what you’d expect the only celebrity in New Zealand to say.

2.23 Karen O’Leary is crying and I want to RIOT on her behalf

“I just don’t like people being unkind to other people,” the Wellington Paranormal star sobs to camera, and the sooner Matt Chisholm offers up his snazzy shirt to wipe away her tears, the better.

2.25 Dr Joel makes a weird noise