Man vs. Wild Season 1 (6 DVD Set): Learn life-saving survival skills in some of the toughest, most treacherous environments on the Earth with a man no stranger to extremes, Bear Grylls. Drawing upon all his experiences as a soldier, mountaineer and seasoned adventurer, watch as Bear strands himself in popular wilderness destinations. Armed with a few supplies and the clothes on his back, see how he claws his way back to civilization while demonstrating survival techniques along the way. The fol
$ 39.95
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Buy the official Discovery Channel DVD Set!,
I abosuletly love this show. Some people say Bear loses a lot for having a camera crew and putting himself into certain situations that aren’t truly dangerous, but this is a television show and it is supposed to be entertaining.
With that aside, I bought this 6-DVD set from amazon with hopes of it being of high quality. I was sorely mistaken. These are DVD-R transfers from an outside company.
The downsides to this set include:
There are no interactive menus
The letterbox presentation bars at the top are unsteady and shake.
The actual shows are not of DVD quality
On the second disk of part one, it wouldn’t return back to the menu after the episode was over, it just returned to the middle of the episode.
I returned this item to amazon and they were very friendly about the entire ordeal. Their customer service has never steered me wrong.
The actual Discovery channel box set of Man vs. Wild season 1 has fixed all of the above mentioned problems because they are the actual DVDs. So in short–if you want a good copy of a great show buy the Discovery Channel DVD’s.
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|Still great fun,
Over all a very entertaining program, but be forewarned that this DVD release reflects the recent re-editing of the episodes. The original concept of the show has been changed from “finding your way back to civilization,” to an on location demonstration of survival technique. While the original concept was more fun to watch, it had been criticized because various situations were staged without informing the audience. The re-edited episodes explain when and where Bear receives outside help. The new concept is more honest, but leaves on the editing room floor scenes that were more staged for their own good, such as the wild horses and bunny kill from the Sierra Nevada episode.
The Hawaiian, the MOAB and the pilot episodes are also missing from this set, as they have been highly criticized for their authenticity.
Also please be aware that this DVD set is presented as non-anamorphic video.
Bear Grylls still comes off as being very charismatic and very hungry. Despite its short comings, this is still a worthy purchase for any Man Vs Wild fan as it is plenty fun to watch, and you might even learn something.
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|The Bear Grylls Show,
Bear Grylls served in the British Special Forces; at the time he climbed Everest, he broke the world record as the youngest ever to do so; he parasailed the same mountain (really, he had an oxygen tank and a special parasail); he is an avid rockclimber, mountaineer, and adventurer; needless to say, Bear Grylls is a pretty cool guy.
That’s why Man vs. Wild, a show dedicated to survival, tends to fixate on him; but this isn’t a bad thing. The show is only partly instructional; if person wants some real lessons in survival, they need more then just Man vs. Wild.
A review of the show is not complete without mentioning its scenery. Filmed in HD, this show has some great shots of the world’s most foreboding wildernesses; wide angle shots are fantastically directed (even if it takes always from the sincerity of the “survival” situation.) and Bear always needs to get into a place in an interesting way; weather it’s hangliding, parachuting, jumping out of a helicopter, or some other stunt; these scenes, while a bit contrived, are incredibly fun to watch.
There is a gross-out factor to this show, and the editors know it. Bear often has to find food, lacking options, like a fire, he must sometimes eat some disgusting things raw, which is shown in a little too much detail. But even this has a point; it does show what a person must go through in order to survive. Despair, I have heard, is the number one killer; keeping a positive, survivalist attitude is the most important factor.
It’s also worth noting that the show doesn’t shy away form some of the crueler aspects of life; Bear must sometimes hunt, and kill medium sized animals (sometimes cute ones); it shows the complete process, from capture to preparation to eating. For this the show has taken some heat from environmentalists (I believe there is a petition to get it off the air.) Bear Grylls clearly has a reverence for the beauty of nature, but he is not deluded as to what nature is; he’s no environmentalist (at least not by their standards.)
Bear Grylls also took some heat awhile ago for supposedly not being authentic; that he was actually much safer then he said he was. I tend to put such accusations under the same category as the people who where shocked to learn that Ashley Simpson was lip-synching. Of course it’s not completely real, the fact that he has a camera crew with him tells you something; the wide angle shots have to be planned, and I’m sure the crew is not scrounging for food like Bear. Still, Bear really jumps into crocodile and leech infested swamps, really boulders that steep rock-face, and really does all the things impossible to fake. There are also times when Bear is clearly nervous, like when a good sized shark was circling his small raft in the pacific.
This might sound cruel of me; but I enjoy watching this show from the safety of my own home; watching Bear Grylls have to ring water out of his own socks; or walk through is water; or futilely try to start a fire in the rainforest; makes me feel cozy.
People don’t seem to realize how big this world is, this is only occasionally demonstrated in the media; when a rich adventure’s plane went down, the largest single man-hunt in history couldn’t find him; and that was in America! This show gives a clear sense of the scale of our planet, and how little of it we actually occupy.
I like this show because it’s only star – Bear Grylls- is a clearly confident, competent, and strong individual. It also perfectly demonstrates, implicitly, the importance of technology in our lives, by showing what life is when a person is (mostly) detached from it.
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