See ‘Survivor’ winner John Cochran, ‘Big Brother’ stars, and more in ‘Reality Gamemasters’

While you wait for the June 26 premiere of “Big Brother 15” (otherwise known as the day Canadians without live feeds cry themselves to sleep), or even the premiere of “Survivor” many months down the road, here’s a little something to help whet your appetite for reality competitions featuring some of your favorite competitions: “Reality Gamemasters.”

The premise for this web series is pretty simple: It’s the classic board game of “Risk,” except with some of your favorite characters taking part and with as much strategy talk involved as humanly possible. The cast consists of reigning “Survivor” champion John Cochran along with past winner Sophie Clarke and runner-up Stephen Fishbach; meanwhile, the “Big Brother” universe has such people as Eric Stein (season 8), reigning champion Ian Terry (season 13), and Matt Hoffman (season 12). There are also some surprise guests, but we won’t spoil them for you here.

The series is a product of executive producers Alex Forstenhausler and former “Survivor” star Rob Cesternino. As a frequent listener of Rob Has a Podcast (one of many on our podcast rotation), we’ve been excited to see what the end result of all his hard work would be. Rob helps to co-host the show alongside Entertainment Weekly’s Dalton Ross, and it is a fun slice of strategy that game geeks out there should love as a hearty appetizer to everything else coming up later this year. Plus, it’s also nice to see “Survivor” and “Big Brother” people co-mingling … especially Cochran and Ian, since we’ve long believed them to be two halves of the same person.

New episodes of “Reality Gamemasters” will be posted every Tuesday and Thursday until the six-episode run is complete. Meanwhile, you can check out the first two installments below.

Oh, and if you missed the news about Cochran joining the writing staff of the CBS comedy “The Millers” for this coming season, check it out here.

Photo: Reality Gamemasters