Bear Grylls to push celebrities to their limit on ITV survival show

(Image credit: betty / Mark Johnson / ITV)

Bear Grylls will push celebrities to their limits for his new ITV show Mission Survive.

The TV adventurer - who has led A-list stars including Zac Efron, Ben Stiller and Channing Tatum through the wilderness for his NBC show Running Wild With Bear Grylls - has signed up to front the new show in the UK.

Mission Survive will see Bear take eight celebrities - who are yet to be revealed - into the depths of the rainforest in Central America on a 12-day trek, during which they will compete for survival.

At the end of every episode Bear will eliminate one person, with just three taking part in the final to be named the Mission Survivor.

Bear said: "This show is all about empowerment and I am so proud of how the celebrity team who joined me on Mission Survive performed. It was without doubt a tough expedition, but also a very life-enhancing adventure for everyone involved.

"I would set them daily survival missions and would then regularly back away, leaving them to their own devices, so that they would learn by doing it and making mistakes.

"That's the source of all genuine growth in a survivor. I was looking for the qualities that a survivor in a real-life scenario most needs: positivity, resourcefulness, courage, determination, and a whole heap of bloody mindedness!"

The celebrity contestants had to learn to find their own shelter, water, fire and food, during an expedition which sees them abseil down waterfalls, cross rapids and wade through swamps, as well as confronting scorpions, snakes and sand flies.

Bear will be assisted in choosing who to eliminate and eventually win the mission, by his much trusted colleagues, expedition and survival experts Megan Hine and Scott Heffield.

 

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Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.