Bear Grylls- TV programme

[outdoorcode]

Not sure if it will be any good, but starts this Saturday at 7pm on Ch4

"In this new series, former Special Forces adventurer Bear Grylls demonstrates how to survive in the world's most extreme environments. With little more than a knife and the clothes on his back, Bear puts himself in the position of a stranded tourist by parachuting into the middle of some of the world's greatest natural wildernesses, including the Amazon, the swamps of the Everglades, the Alps and the Moab desert.

Followed by an intrepid camera crew, his challenge is to use his survival training and instincts to survive and reach civilisation safely. He demonstrates how to overcome the worst that the natural world can throw at you, from obstacles such as vertical rock faces and quick sand, to flora and fauna ranging from alligators to poisonous plants. In the first programme Bear's in the Costa Rican rainforest. It's a beautiful but hostile environment and he decides to follow streams and rivers to the sea and the safety of the communities who live there. Bear follows a stream and scales a 120-foot waterfall using ropes made from vine. But despite all his training and preparation, he gets a painful dose of diarrhoea from contaminated water. Luckily he knows a local tree whose sap will help. He builds a shelter to withstand the heavy equatorial rainfall, lights a mosquito-repelling fire made from a termite mound, and shows how to fish at night, and which succulent, but poisonous, berries to avoid. Finally he constructs a raft to navigate the mangrove swamps, and head to the open sea to find safety. "

 

[madrussian]

I've seen his show here in the US. He's a bit of a showman. He uses the parachute and paracord after he parachutes in. So, in reality he has a little more than a knife and the clothes on his back. Though one can still learn alot from him.

 

[Nomad_Of_Soul]

I've seen his man vs wild series great viewing if your into your survival stuff, what i liked the most was instead of just telling you what to do if you fell into a frozen lake or quick sand he would jump in and show you. He eats raw fish he just caught, he even eats raw meat from the carcass of a zebra out in the African plains, great stuff.

 

[Zammo]

Looking forward to this since I saw that it was in pre-production in the broadcast mag, should be good.

 

[Surrey Yeoman]

Looks like it could be good.

Hope it's better than that French Foreign Leigion thing he did a while back.........greatly disappointing that was!

Still, always interesting to see someone else's slant on things.

Yeoman

 

[David Morgan]

Just watched it; 30 minutes of reasonable entertainment crammed into a 60 minute slot. Some of it was good and some of it was interesting but the faux-hystrionics and contrived tension is initially annoying and then just boring, and is the polar opposite of programming of the Attenborough/Mears type; just knowledgable people showing us interesting things with a minimum of gimmickry. I'll record the rest if I remember and watch the bits that interest me but won't watch them live and I won't loose any sleep if I forget. A preview in the Guardian's Guide magazine about summed it up;

Grylls' skills... are illuminating, but his high drama style is reminiscent of a six-year-old at bedtime. "Can't quite... make it up the stairs..." you can hear the young Bear saying; "got to... lift the toilet seat..."

Too much drama, not enough interest I'm afraid.

 

[British Red]

I watched a bit and turned it off in disgust sadly. His "water is okay to drink if..." stuff when he clearly had (shown later) the ability to boil it was very poor advice (I hope his stomach problems were real). His knife sharpening was laughable and his "lets climb down a waterfall with vines to save 2 hours" dangerously irresponsible.

Not Bushcraft for sure, poor and flat wrong advice for survival situations IMO. Not one I'll watch again

Red

 

[Greg]

After watching that one the other month "Ultimate Survivor" I think it was called, and all the stupidly dangerous stunts he pulled I don't particulary think that I want to watch this one anyway!!

The bloke is just a TV showman!!

 

[falling rain]

Oh deary, deary, derry down day........................ What a great big pile of elderly ladies elasticated knickers that was!!!!!
I admire the chap as he's undoubtedly done a lot in his still young life. He's been in the SAS and climbed Everest (I think he was the youngest Brit at the time) to name a couple............ but he's not a TV personality. It was like Action man, meets the milk tray dude, meets a panicky teenager. Most of the advice was ridiculous and certainly goes against anything I've ever learnt about survival. What happened to S>T>O>P and remaining calm and thinking about your priorities and planning a strategy, etc , etc. He charged through the undergrowth at times (which I'm sure wouldn't have been taught in his time in the SAS, and his bow drilling posture was laughable (no bracing the bearing block arm against the leg going on) he says it 'it's a bit wobbly and hard to keep upright' or words to that effect and the fact that he wasn't bracing his arm is probably why !!! At one stage he was battoning using a rock on the back of his knife He did use a piece of wood to earlier............. but if I was relying on a knife as much as he was I wouldn't use a rock. I wouldn't use a rock full stop for battoning. It's not as though there was a shortage of wood !!! Why didn't he boil his water in his crusader cup in the first place if he had a cup That's almost certainly why he ended up with his severe diahorrea and vomitting. You don't take risks in a survival situation. You do things the safe way even if it requires more effort and takes longer, anybody should know that, especially a guy whos been in the SAS. If he was just demonstrating in case you didn't have a cup, then that should have been mentioned but it wasn't. The benifit of climbing that rickety old tree to look at the surroundings was also a bit iffy. Game over if you fell out of that tree and busted your leg. Way too risky The last thing you want is to risk an injury or severe sickness in a survival situation. To give the guy a little credit he did know his jungle plants/trees and the advice about following down into a valley and then downstream was sound. I personally wouldn't have gotten off my raft in any mangroves. It would be a complete nightmare to negotiate, let alone the various beasties that live there. I'd have taken my chances flushing into the sea, and got to the shore soon after, or hugged the shore and left it as late as possible to abandon the raft. I could go on but I can't be bothered.................... 1 out of 10....... I hope it improves as the series goes on. Give me RM's proggs anytime.

 

[Steve R]

Exactly what falling-rain said.


Even I know better than to do the kinds of things he did.

 

[CLEM]

I missed em,are they being repeated???

 

[lardbloke]

As I remember Mr Grylls was attached to 21/23 SAS (i.e Voulnteers/TA) and was discharged on medical grounds after damaging his back in a parachuting stunt that went wrong. I recall the 21/23 SAS training is quite different to the regular unit (22 SAS) as most of thier duties are (depending your role) carried out in the local environment and do not progress to harsher climate survival training until much later in thier career (usually by this time they have had enough and come out or join as full timers anyway). So I would suspect that his survival training in extreme environments is limited to private experiences rather than correct military training.
All in all it makes sort of good television if you like that sort of thing...

 

[Simon1]

All I can say is what a load of pants
I bet if any true Bushcraft instructor types were watching that load of garbage last night it was just showing people how not to do things
I myself wont be bothering to watch any more of his programs

 

[twisted firestarter]

Was I alone in thinking Born Survivors was stupid? Apart from the fact that Bear Grylls had a camera crew following his every move which begs the question what kit did they have 'just in case'? (did you notice how he climbed up the tallest tree without a safety line yet the cameraman was up there with him )
I also winced several times as he made a rubbish shelter which allowed water to pour in, he did the worst bowdrill I've ever seen and he was frankly wreckless with his food and water habits. It was more like a 'how not to' program. I will be watching next week though to see how not to survive in other environments

 

[janiepopps]

Its the first one I've ever seen and I thought the way he was throwing his kinfe round was downright daft. The chance of getting a knife wound infected in those conditions is incredibly high - but, not if your camera crew have a medic amongst them I guess

It was interesting watching but I definitely prefer the more sedate methods of bushcraft!

j

 

[Outdoorsman]

I enjoyed it, at least its something to watch that’s loosely based on bushcraft. I would have thought he would have taken a bigger knife, anyone manage to identify what knife he had? and surely he could have used a smooth stone from the stream to sharpen it instead of stropping it on a piece of wood covered in ground up stone

 

[jon r]

I totally agree with you! It was a bit far fetched and a bit of a comedy to be honest

The bow drill was veryu poor that he made, for a survival expert you would have thought he would know how to make a propper bow drill. And i dont beleive that he made an ember with it. Did you see how he threw the ember around, yea right! !

When he got to the huge waterfall he said that it would take hours to walk round but the camera man was already down there filming him!

I didnt think much to his knife sharpening technique either! After about two swipes on that stick he said it was comming up a treat!

The only thing that i was impressed by was the raft! It was pretty good!

However the program did have the ideas and concepts and hats off to him for getting on TV.

Jon!

Im sure you are all going to roast him alive now!

 

[Biddlesby]

I've heard of that technique elsewhere on the forums, so I think it has its benefits.

But agree with Outdoorsman. It's entertaining, and loosely bushcrafty. Of course, he is taking stupid risks in the name of television, and I don't buy this whole "I have no idea where I am and only have clothes, a knife and waterbottle"; but some of his advice seems sound, and for the little gems its worth watching in my opinion.

Don't think much of his bow drill technique though!

 

[paulcd]

Bit behind with the telly...please let me know when I can see this, what channel + any repeats

 

[oldsoldier]

He has been quite criticized here in the states for his antics. Granted, he may know what he is doing, but touting the show as a "how to survive", then doing the things he does, is irresponsible. I'm assuming this show is just making it over there....wait till you see some of the other stuff he gets up to!