You VS Wild | Bear Grylls TV Show On Netflix

2019, brought the idea of “choose your own adventure” style TV shows to their platform. This TV show stars Bear Grylls and he’s not running wild, he wants to run wild with you! I was particularly enthused that my young son was really keen on this particular because sometimes it’s hard to find something to watch on Netflix. You VS Wild is a great choice.

This new interactive series with Bear Grylls is fantastic and let me tell you, it’s fun too. I made it an evening activity with my kids as something we could all do together. More importantly, we each took turns making the decisions for Grylls as he trekked off into the jungle.

Bear Grylls TV Shows Where You Control the Action

In ‘You vs Wild‘ Bear begins aboard a seaplane and tells you about the mission. From there, you’re given the choice of selecting either a grappling hook or a slingshot and delivered unceremoniously into croc-infested waters. This made for immediate excitement as we called for Bear to ‘hurry up!’ I didn’t think we could have so much fun finding something to watch on Netflix.

His target is to rescue a missing doctor, alone in the jungle, and to find her you must trek across various terrains. I must admit, my son chose the grappling hook and I ‘accidentally’ highlighted the slingshot. I mean, come on, it’s a slingshot. We made some other decisions together but in the end, our mission was unsuccessful due to ending up in a cavern without the climbing device.

The greatest thing about watching this on Netflix is that Bear Grylls isn’t a cartoon and his actions are fraught with danger at every turn. He falls into caverns, and ice water, and sludges through swamps and rivers. He shows various survivalist techniques and eats things found on the forest floors. All his actions have consequences and the imagination runs wild at all the different types of ‘reality shows’ this could be brought into.

Bear Grylls in You vs Wild — Decide to get Bear Grylls to eat this worm in You vs Wild, one of the best Bear Grylls TV shows ever

Together is Better On You VS Wild

In any case, together, the three of us failed our mission due to some bad choices, however, on the second go, we made it. Meanwhile, my son was more than determined to go back and try again. In other words, we needed to make better choices more carefully. Some people seem to believe that it would be at this point, as a parent, that I should drive home that the show is pretending. Likewise, this version of ‘reality television’ is a contrived act.

There are people in the world who think this type of ‘fictitious’ show is creating a culture of doing dangerous things for the sake of being dangerous. Well, I don’t think so, and I won’t be smashing the illusion anytime soon. People have been doing reckless things for inane reasons long before Bear Grylls came along and you can’t teach people common sense.

Many of Bear Grylls’ adventure shows have previously come under fire for stunts just like this. Disclaimers have been added to many of his series about being assisted by producers when out in the wild. Gee, some people are big old spoilsports! I’m hoping this is the first of many of these types of shows to come along. Imagine if they ventured into other reality television shows like My Kitchen Rules or Chopped.

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Is The TV Show You VS Wild Scripted?

It’s easy to spot differences here in this nifty new series where the ‘Man vs Wild’ celebrity survivor has had the scenes scripted to go with the show. The doctor featured in the first episode is an uncredited actress (possibly a production crew as far as I can tell.) Behind the scenes, Bear was said to have had plenty of misadventures while filming as well as had to eat or drink a variety of gross things.

In some cases, the producers didn’t even make him get a massive blister from a poisonous plant and used makeup! Oh, the horror! What they did do though, is take the massive amount of experience Bear has in making these types of shows. For example, when he went to walk across some ice that looked a bit sketchy, the crew would get him to come back and walk over it so they could use the scene as one of the ‘bad’ choices. You’ll know it’s the scene if you see him fall into ice water.

You vs Wild is the perfect meshing of reality and scripted television where for once, you can see it’s heavily orchestrated but don’t care much. At one point we were given the option between eating some termites or a large grub complete with pincers. If you take note of what Bear Grylls is saying, he mentions that the grub is particularly unpalatable. I urged my boys to choose the termites but they unceremoniously chanted ‘the grub’ and while I closed my eyes, Bear ate it.