With little more than the clothes on his back, survival expert Bear Grylls goes toe-to-toe with some of Earth’s toughest, most remote environments in each edge-of-your-seat episode of Man vs. Wild. Grylls faces sweltering desert temperatures, icy, raging rivers and hungry predators as he fights for survival using techniques he learned as a British Special Forces soldier. You’ll never look at the great outdoors the same way again!
Episodes:
The Rockies: In this episode, Grylls encounters a grizzly bear, jumps off a 70-foot cliff and floats nearly 12 miles in treacherous and freezing white water, all on a diet of rattlesnake, raw fish and worms.
European Alps: Armed with just a knife, water bottle, cup and a flint to make fire, Grylls parachutes into this mountain range. From a radical new technique that could help save lives in crevasse zones, to building a snow shelter to survive alpine storms, to demonstrating how to escape from a fall into a frozen lake, Grylls puts his skills to the test.
Costa Rican Rainforest: Grylls’s challenge is to make his way to civilization from within the Costa Rican rainforest with just a knife and a water bottle. His journey takes him up 100-foot trees and down pounding waterfalls, through secondary jungle and mangrove swamps to the sea. Moab Desert: On this incredible journey back to civilization, Grylls travels down a maze of narrow canyons, encounters rattlesnakes and escapes quicksand.
Sierra Nevada: This time carrying only a water bottle and cup, Grylls shows us how to survive in the Sierra’s breathtaking yet deceptively dangerous three major mountainous regions.
Alaskan Mountain Range: Join Grylls in this challenge as he scales the icy peaks of the Chugach Mountains, Alaska, one of the toughest environments on the planet.
Mount Kilauea: Made up of a bleak expanse of solidified lava which stretches for 33,000 acres, this environment is one of the world’s most inhospitable. One tourist a week is rescued from its lava fields. Grylls deliberately puts himself in the position of one of those lost tourists, putting his survival skills to the ultimate test.
Desert Island: Grylls eats sea urchins and fish eyes, encounters razor-sharp coral reefs, rip currents, and relentless surf and comes face to face with sharks.
African Savannah: Grylls demonstrates how to find water, build shelter, use natural medicines and prevent elephant and rhino attacks. In his journey to safety, Grylls eats the meat from a lion-kill in this thrilling episode.
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May 19, 2008
#1
What is so upsetting is that this show is presented as a guide of what to do in certain wilderness situations. Frankly, it’s more like watching an episode of “Jackass”. The guy is a showboat, his stuff is staged to seem more dramatic than it is, he chooses the most risky and stupid ways to get something done and he has a team of people to do the real heavy lifting while he spends the nights in a hotel. What a joke.
May 19, 2008
#2
I am only writing this review because it is important for viewers to understand that a great deal of the “survival” advice doled out on this show is not only false but can endanger people if they take it seriously. The makers and distributers of this program are very irresponsible in this regard. Parents, this is mainly a warning for you.
Some of the “techniques” are baloney, and many of the “survival choices” the host makes are extremely inadvisable and should not be followed by the average person or even an intermediate wilderness adventurer.
The fact that the show itself is faked is of secondary concern to me. The host sometimes stays in hotels when supposedly sleeping in the wild, several scenes are faked, and the crew does a great deal of the work for the host. Why is this? For entertainment certainly, but more importantly because a lot of what he does is extremely… stupid. So stupid, sketchy and far-fetched that not even Grylls would do it. (Some of the things he supposedly does on the show might have actually killed him if he had really done so. Like I said, bad advice.)
There are better programs out there with reasonable and realistic survival advice (Survivorman).
May 19, 2008
#3
Man Vs. Wild is an excellent title for this series as Grylls repeatedly chooses to demonstrate his UK Special Forces Training, and incidentally his crew’s significant off-screen help, by choosing the absolute most difficult choices and routes for dramatic effect. A true expert simulating a true survival situation should demonstrate the routes and choices that offer the least resistance, least chance of danger/injury, and best chance of survival/rescue. Grylls’ demonstrations offer some of the MOST dangerous choices and most technical routes.
Furthermore, drama appears to be created where none should exist. Off camera, Grylls had been found to stay in comfortable hotel rooms while giving the impression of remaining in the wilderness overnight. On Camera, some situations are filmed giving the impression of danger and physical exertion, while the scene in reality is far more serene. One particular example is during the “Costa Rican Rainforest” episode in which Bear is shown to be tossed about by the waves and into the shore. As he scampers ashore one can notice that the waves are no more than perhaps 2 feet high.
If you’re looking for more realistic advice, demonstrations, and usable wilderness survival information while still being entertained, try Survivorman with Les Stroud.
May 19, 2008
#4
This guy is a total ham, with outdoor/survival advice that I wouldn’t touch without double/triple checking. He’s followed by a crew, guaranteeing his safety & protection at every turn. Where’s the risk? Isn’t that the whole point?
Shows like this only diminish the validity of this relatively new TV genre, taking attention away from more credible & authentic shows like Les Stroud’s “Survivorman.”
Next time you see “Man vs. Wild”, watch closely, this egotistical ham literally LEAPS like a ballerina over mud puddles two feet wide.
May 19, 2008
#5
The good: A cute host and beautiful camera work in exotic locales.
The bad: The entire narrative that is presented with each episode is fake. Verifiably fake. Admitted-to-by-the-crew-fake. There is an official crew of 32 people, not counting consultants, and including *four* directors. In the Sierras ep, their survival consultant said that the “wild horses” that Bear tries to ride were shipped in from Nevada. On the desert island, his raft was built by a survival consultant, not him; it took her a week and a half, and she used rope. When he was “alone” on the raft, according to director Graham Strong, “we” beat on the raft to scare away the sharks (they also had a diver checking for sharks when Bear jumped in). Bear has admitted to wearing a life jacket under his shirt in a Rockies river (the camera work tries to hide it, and he removes it before and after the swim off-camera), and to learning his survival skills 2 days before the ep (unsurprising, since he usually does them wrong). It goes on and on. The narratives presented are simply not real.
Furthermore, the advice is often quite bad. If you doubt this, go to a survival forum and mention “Man vs Wild”. Be prepared for tirades against the show. He advices you to do things like drink urine, which is advised against by more experts than you can shake a stick at, including the head of a urological organization and even the US Army Field Manual. He claims things like coconut oil protecting you from the sun (it provides so *little* sun protection that it’s used in tanning lotions). And on, and on.
If you want to see a cute guy eat gross things in beautiful settings, this is the show for you. Otherwise, it isn’t.