Netflix’s Bandersnatch follow-up is an interactive survival show with Bear Grylls

As a kid, I read a crap load of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. As such, I’ve sent a fair share of young heroes and heroines to their grisly deaths with my ill-fated decisions. I never really cared much for those literary souls so it didn’t bother me one bit. However, I actually like Bear Grylls and would rather not send the famed British survivalist jumping down a rocky ravine or leopard crawling across thin ice if it means doing him some real bodily harm. Those are seemingly some potentially real scenarios though in You vs Wild.

The upcoming survival show will see Grylls team up with Netflix for another of those sticking it to Mother Nature shows like Discovery’s Man vs Wild that he has become famous for. The difference though is that Netflix will be leveraging the technology they famously used in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch to make this into an interactive experience in which we get to choose what Grylls’ actions on-screen should be. The series will send Grylls to locations around the world, including icy tundras, dense forests, sheer mountains and more, and whether or not Grylls succeeds in surviving everything nature throws at him is up to you. To give you a taste of what’s going to be on offer, Netflix released this pretty cool interactive trailer below.

Of course, these are all pre-filmed segments in which Grylls isn’t actually putting his life on the line based on the fickle whims of an audience who will probably choose the worst path just for the LULZ. But in a statement to Variety, Grylls still said that “The stakes are high in this one!”

I’m so proud to deliver this first-of-its-kind live-action interactive series, really giving viewers an all-access pass to explore the world and its landscapes in my boots.

Speaking of boots, Netflix first began the melding of TV programming and video games back in 2017 with the interactive Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale program for kids. The streaming service would try the format out with a few other programs, but these were all rather simplistic in their approach. With Bandersnatch though – the latest segment of Charlie Brooker’s mind-bending Black Mirror sci-fi anthology series – the streaming service introduced a level of narrative and technical complexity and depth not seen before in these affairs.

The resultant movie took the internet by storm and became a massive success, entering the pop culture lexicon. We’ll have to see if You vs Wild can replicate the same level of fervour when its 8-episode first season debuts on Netflix on 10 April.

Last Updated: March 19, 2019