The trend of reality competitions where one of the contestants secretly has a leg up on the others continues with the new Fox series The Snake. It even continues the trend of having these shows hosted by comedians from the UK; this time, the host is stand-up comedian Jim Jefferies. But is it any good?

Opening Shot: Host Jim Jeffries stands in the center of a circle, surrounded by crates. “Welcome to The Snake,” he says. “This is social survival of the fittest.”

The Gist: What’s in those crates? The contestants, because they’re each being treated as a “Live Reptile.” Fifteen people emerge from those crates, all of whom work in one profession or another where the power of persuasion and making alliances are part of the job.

Jacob, for instance, is a pastor. There are two cops that are in the game: Kailee and Derek. Bryan is a jewel thief who just got done serving a three-year prison stint. Alyssa runs an Only Fans page. Cody is a bull rider, and MacLaine is an Indianapolis Colts cheerleader. And that’s only half the group.

Every week, a challenge is given to determine which contestant will be The Snake. Whoever gets that title will be able to determine which housemate stays during that week’s “saving ceremony.” Then, in turn, each saved contestant will save someone until two are left. Then, The Snake gets to say which one of the two will be going home. The winner gets $100,000.

In the first episode, Jeffries asks right off the bat, “Which one of you wants to take charge right now?” The person who volunteers gets to pick six others. They think they have gotten some sort of advantage, but what really is happening is that the eight people who didn’t get picked get to do the first challenge, which involves — you guessed it — live snakes.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Snake is like The Mole, The Traitors, and Million Dollar Secret. In fact, it’s so like the last one on the list that it even employs a British comedian as its host.

Our Take: A couple of things about The Snake got us scratching our heads. The first issue is something we’ll address below. The second issue is that, while there was a challenge in the episode, it was a pretty low-energy one that didn’t take up a whole lot of time. Most of the game is about trust, about the show’s motto: “Befriend, Betray, or Be Gone.” So a lot of it will consist of people forming alliances, and the people who are The Snake for that week really strategizing to figure out who they want to save and who they want to boot.

But the challenges need to have a little more to them as the series goes along — and in the season preview at the end of the episode, that seems to be the case. Getting The Snake designation is a big deal, big enough that the challenge should be on a bigger scale. Yet, if the challenge involves trust and deception, as this first one did, the tension seems to be much lower.

One of the other problems is that the contestants that think they’re great liars, like tech executive Kethryn, are not as good at it as they think, and it’s obvious. Now, we get that, in the heat of the game with the cameras and lights on, it may be tough for the contestants to see through people like Kethryn, but it felt pretty apparent to us that she was BSing everyone. All it takes, for instance, is for people to compare notes on the lies she told about her parents; she’d tell one person one story and another person another. As proud as she was with her preparation for this gig, Kethryn didn’t really seem to think all this through.

As usual, the abundance of contestants at the beginning means that some contestants don’t get a lot of screen time. What we hope is that the ones that stick around distinguish themselves, whether it’s because they’re good liars, good players or both.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The person who’s eliminated gets back in a crate and is put on a truck.

Sleeper Star: Frank has the role of the “funny guy”, with a voice that sounds like a younger, less hoarse version of Harvey Fierstein’s .

Most Pilot-y Line: Some of the contestants decided that they’d wear a “uniform” of some sort to distinguish themselves in the group: Jacob wore his reverend’s collar, Cody wore chaps, MacLaine wore a generic blue-and-white cheerleader-style outfit, and Kailee wore generic police gear. That’s all well and good for the intro, but they re-wore those clothes to the next night’s saving ceremony. Was this their choice, or the producers’? Either way, it’s a cheesy gimmick that gets even cheesier the more times we see it.

Our Call: SKIP IT. We just didn’t connect with any of the contestants in The Snake. We did think Jefferies made for an appropriately snarky host, but it feels like none of these contestants are capable of the deception that this game requires.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.