LITTLE ROCK — Sometimes you have to chuckle at the macho display of rampaging testosterone on Man vs. Wild. But what can you expect when the host’s name is “Bear” Grylls.
Grylls, who was born Edward Michael Grylls, got his nickname from his sister as a newborn. The name stuck and the adventurer has been living up to it ever since.
Man vs. Wild, Season 6, kicks off at 8 p.m. today on Discovery Channel. Expect Grylls to be in his usual exuberant form as he once again demonstrates his consummate survival skills.
Over the course of the seasons, Grylls has dropped into the wilds of every far corner of the earth to test his mettle.
Armed only with a camera crew, a fleet of Range Rovers and the hazards of the nearest resort, Grylls has demonstrated what it takes to survive just about anywhere — from the lava fields of Hawaii and the jungles of Central America to the uncharted wilderness of deepest Alabama.
Yeah, Alabama. I watched that episode again just last week.
A helicopter drops Grylls, who was still recovering from a shoulder injury, atop a cliff beside a raging river. He climbs down a tree (reminding us his shoulder had been injured), gambols down the hillside and plunges buck nekkid into the river to fetch an old tarp to make a raft.
Fortunately, his private parts were fuzzed out in editing to preserve the show’s modesty.
Grylls later climbs up a narrow fissure in a cliff (instead of walking ahead a few more feet to where it ended) and wades across “an alligator infested pond,” and traverses a raging controlled fire where the flames were towering all of 6 inches high. He also ate deer droppings. Ick.
It was all a bit silly, but he saved the best for last.
Hearing a logging truck approaching, Grylls races down a hillside and leaps upon the thing as it passes. Whew. It may have been an agonizing five or 10 more minutes until another truck came by on the well-traveled highway.
I think he mentioned his previously injured shoulder a half dozen times in the episode.
Yes, it’s a little silly, but we’re supposed to forget all that and concentrate on Grylls’ survival lessons. Each of the things he so ebulliently demonstrates might just come in handy some day, even eating deer pellets.
Don’t get me wrong, Grylls is one tough cookie. He was the youngest Briton to scale Mount Everest at age 23 and was in the British Special Forces.
There will be six new episodes in the latest season. Grylls is set to “endure the most intense journeys to Arizona, Borneo, Cape Wrath in Scotland, Norway and a deserted island in the South Pacific.”
One offering will be a special compilation episode, which features unseen footage of Grylls providing viewers with his ultimate survival guide.
Civil War encore. PBS will replay a remastered version of Ken Burns’ The Civil War over five consecutive nights beginning April 3. The series first aired in 1990 and 40 million viewers watched. It made Burns a household name and remains the highest-rated series in public television.
“Prior to The Civil War,” Burns told PBS, “my colleagues and I toiled in relative anonymity. While we still work as a small group in a small town in New Hampshire, The Civil War created a new thirst for history and stories about America that has allowed us to explore a wide range of topics.”
More Civil War. History Channel also plans to “both honor and commemorate” the 150th anniversary of the Civil War with a four-year educational campaign that will begin with a week-long “programming event.” No word on when that debuts.
Gettysburg, a two-hour feature from Tony and Ridley Scott, is already in production.
More Meteorites. Science Channel has ordered a third season of Meteorite Men, featuring co-hosts Geoff Norkin and Steve Arnold. Arnold lives in Kingston not far from Huntsville.
The duo travel about hunting meteorites. It makes for interesting viewing.
More Top Gear. History Channel has ordered a second season of the U.S. version of Top Gear. Production will begin in the spring with Adam Ferrara as host and featuring champion rally and drift racer Tanner Foust and racing analyst Rutledge Wood.
The series features nifty cars, stunts and challenges, reviews and celebrity interviews.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Weekend, Pages 32 on 02/17/2011