Summer Stock

Dangerous Games

RUSSIAN ROULETTE Game Show Network, weeknights, 11 p.m.

Historically, there have surely been no greater gluttons for punishment than game-show contestants. They've endured the horrors of Richard Dawson's lip locks, Alex Trebek's stern corrections, and Anne Robinson's withering put-downs--all in the name of cold, hard cash. But host Mark L. Walberg (late of the Fox sleazefest Temptation Island) graciously admits that Russian Roulette's prize gimmick--a manhole-size pit through which unlucky players plummet, one by one, with each passing round of trivia--is a new breed of abuse. "People falling through holes?" asks Walberg. "Even when you know what's coming, each person does it differently and we get a giggle out of it." Except, of course, for the time one clumsy contestant twisted her ankle when she landed on the pad that's meant to cushion the fall for the players. "It's safe," Walberg insists. "Everybody knows what they're getting into. We tell people they can wear what they want to, but it's probably best not to wear spike heels or a short dress." --NF

HARD KNOCKS HBO, premieres July 31, 11 p.m.

Football as spectacle may have flopped last year for Vince McMahon and the XFL, but HBO provided a more engrossing experiment with Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the Baltimore Ravens last summer. But how does the football reality series avoid a sophomore slump? By choosing the love-'em-or-loathe-'em Dallas Cowboys as the subjects, as cameras follow the pigskin pros taking part in some of reality TV's most stomach-turning moments. (If you thought eating bugs was bad, you obviously missed last year's rookie talent show.) NFL Films (which coproduces the series) chronicles six weeks of training-camp hell, with a season--and a player's livelihood--on the line. "This is not a reality show where someone who loses gets voted off the island," explains NFL Films president Steve Sabol. "You lose here, you're out of a job. And not only out of a job, but you've lost a dream, which is even worse." Shattered dreams? Rookie hazing? Fat guys running wind sprints? Touchdown! --DR

MILITARY DIARIES VH1, Mondays, 10 p.m.

Forget boot camp--it's time to really get real. After exploring suburban teenage minutiae in American High, docu-series director-producer R.J. Cutler shipped 80 cameras to soldiers, sailors, and Marines in places like Afghanistan and Kuwait. What he received in return was 2,400 hours of self-shot footage covering everything from patriotic ambivalence ("I love my country," offers one Navy enlistee, "but I fear my government") to music preferences (James Taylor, Cake, lots of Creed). "If there's anything we're accomplishing, it's going beneath the uniform," says Cutler. "It humanizes those people who are putting their lives on the line.... These guys are going through something extraordinary, and the culture doesn't lead to people saying 'What's on your mind? I noticed you were crying yourself to sleep last night.' It doesn't go like that when you're on the USS Stennis and your entire personal space is the width of a desk.... The opportunity for them to reflect is something they really responded to." Consider us recruited. --DS