The Snake is an American reality competition series that premiered on FOX in 2025. The series was created and executive produced by SallyAnn Salsano — best known as the creator of Jersey Shore — who also serves as showrunner, alongside executive producers Frank Miccolis and Kim Green. FOX describes the show as a “social survival of the fittest” competition, and it draws clear comparisons to The Traitors, the wildly popular Peacock series that helped inspire strategy and deception-based reality competition shows.
The series assembles 15 contestants drawn from various persuasive professions — people whose careers depend on reading, influencing, and persuading others. Each episode, contestants face a fresh set of physical and psychological challenges. The player who wins the challenge earns the Snake Medallion and becomes that week’s Snake — the single most powerful person in the game.
Being the Snake means controlling the Saving Ceremony, a high-tension, chain-reaction elimination in which the Snake begins a cascade of saves, with each saved player then choosing the next person to save. Whoever is left at the end of the chain — with no one left to pick them — is eliminated and sent home.
What makes The Snake distinct from straightforward elimination formats is that winning challenges is only part of the game. Alliances, loyalty, romantic connections, and social maneuvering carry just as much weight. A contestant who can’t win a challenge can still survive the Saving Ceremony if they’ve built the right relationships.
Jim Jefferies, the Australian-born stand-up comedian and former host of The Jim Jefferies Show on Comedy Central, hosts the series. Known for his sharp, irreverent style, Jefferies brings a sardonic energy to the proceedings that fits the show’s themes of deception and social maneuvering well.
