Bear Grylls is the most fascinating man in the world.
I want to be Bear Grylls when I grow up. If I could, I'd rename our first born Bear Grylls Storey.
OK. Maybe not that.
Even Grylls' mama didn't name him Bear when he was born. The 40-year-old Northern Ireland native's birth certificate reads "Edward Michael Grylls," but his big sister, Lara, gave him his ursine sobriquet when he was only a week old.
Maybe the nickname shaped the boy and then the man.
In case you don't know who he is, Grylls has been the television host of a number of survival-type TV shows since 2005.
They include Escape to the Legion, Worst Case Scenario, Bear's Wild Weekend, Get Out Alive and The Island.
But Grylls is best known as the host of Man vs. Wild, which ran on Discovery Channel from 2006 to 2012.
On that series, Grylls (along with his intrepid film crew) would be plopped down in some God-forsaken jungle, mountain top or desert and show viewers how to survive using what's on hand -- a knife, a tarp and whatever odds and ends he could scrounge.
Granted, Grylls took some grief for certain staged scenes. One example was when he was "stranded" on a barren Hawaiian island and it was later revealed a major road ran 200 yards or so behind the camera, and there was a five-star resort just down the beach.
Fans didn't mind a few staged scenes if the survival tips were dramatic and handy. One never knows when drinking your bodily fluids, field dressing a camel carcass or fording a raging stream with a kayak made from a windbreaker, duct tape and rattlesnake skins will save your life.
Fans didn't mind because Grylls put the "viva" in survivalist. He's a rugged man's man and one cool dude. How cool is Grylls? He named his boys Jesse, Marmaduke and Huckleberry. Hopefully, they'll grow up as Jess, Duke and Huck or there will be numerous beatdowns on the playground.
Grylls was sailing, mountain climbing and sky diving by the time he was a teenager. He's a Shotokan karate black belt.
He served three years in the British Special Forces, survived a back-breaking (literally) parachute accident in Zambia, climbed Mount Everest at the age of 23, crossed the Atlantic in an open inflatable boat, and took a hot air balloon to the astonishing altitude of 25,000 feet.
How can he top all that? How about a new summer series featuring celebrities on adventures?
Running Wild With Bear Grylls debuts at 7 p.m. Monday on NBC. The network is billing it as "a high-octane, action-based, hour-long alternative series."
In Running Wild, Grylls will take six celebrities (one each episode) into the most remote locations in the United States and around the world for a 48-hour "journey of a lifetime."
The celebrities are actors Zac Efron (Neighbors), Ben Stiller (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), Channing Tatum (22 Jump Street) and Tom Arnold (True Lies); NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders; and Today co-anchor Tamron Hall.
Efron is a virile 26 and fairly ripped. Tatum is also a physical specimen, as seen in Magic Mike. I expect there will be lots of scenes without shirts. Not so for Hall. She's in great shape, but this is a TV-PG family show.
But 55-year-old porcine Tom Arnold? You'll be surprised. He's looking pretty svelte since dropping 90 pounds last year.
Each of the celebrities will endure challenges such as sky diving into the Catskill Mountains, rappelling down the cliffs of Utah and battling torrential wind and rain in Scotland.
The goal is for Grylls and the celebrities to push their minds and bodies to the limit to successfully complete their journeys.
"One of the great privileges for me," says the always ebullient Grylls, "is that I get to do a job that never feels like a job. What's been most powerful for me is to see how the wild can transform people and empower people, and it can actually reconnect them with who they are.
"I start with the premise that I want to take these guys far off the beaten track. Somewhere totally new and a little bit intimidating initially. I want to go somewhere they've never been before.
"And there's often this boyish excitement to them because it's not about the money or fame or recognition -- they've got all that. This is about them doing something they're proud of and us getting to know them in a way you never can from four minutes on a chat show couch.
"The genius of this show is that you get to see the real person. Every single time at the end of Day 2, they're absolutely broken and exhausted. But sometimes you need to leave what you have in order to come back and appreciate it."
First up Monday: Grylls and Efron tackle the Appalachian wilderness. Zac eats a bug. It's a far cry from Efron's High School Musical days.
TV Week on 07/27/2014