The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls; Elvis, The Colonel And The Mob

“Judas Iscariot is so nice! That’s a surprise. Just goes to show – you betray ONE messiah, the scroll-media gets to work and people forget everything else. I’m joshing, of course. I’m having a little religious joke because The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls has put me in such a good mood. The Judas Iscariot in question is actually Luke Dimyan, the actor who plays him in The Chosen: the multi-season series about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The Chosen is a venture by evangelical Christian film-maker Dallas Jenkins that began as a crowdfunded project in 2017 and is now watched by an estimated 280 million people worldwide. Bear Grylls is a fan and a Christian – what could be more natural than him taking members of the cast for survivalist adventures in the Utah desert, to talk to them about faith in between ziplining across chasms, filtering water through socks and rappelling down cliffs? It is precisely because the result does feel so natural that I find myself in such a good mood. The actors are not asked to do too much. Some do a helicopter jump, some don’t. They each do a couple of small challenges, where neither the intrinsic difficulties nor the participants’ hesitations are lingered over, and then they stop for another chat about acting or God while Bear feeds them an MRE (military ready meal) or nugget of survivalist wisdom. No one becomes an emotional or physical wreck.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“I have had my beefs with some of Grylls’s programmes in the past, mostly because I don’t agree with killing animals for TV shows. But this series is really rather good, more gently paced, thoughtful and set amid truly spectacular scenery. The first episode is helped by the charisma and wit of Dimyan, who is Coptic Egyptian, a native Christian ethnoreligious group of Egypt, and whose grandfather was a priest. Two men skydiving, one with his mouth open in excitement, with a parachute visible in the background. He says Judas was the character he wanted to play the most, even though it means strangers come up to him and say, “We don’t like you” (got to love viewers who can’t distinguish between reality and the telly). Judas, he says, is a complex individual who did love Jesus and is interesting to play because his story is a “poetic tragedy”. He was “doomed to fail” because he “wasn’t able to accept what was out of his control”. Grylls then has Dimyan sucking moisture out of a sweaty sock. They find some damp sand in the shadow of a rock and a survival method is to fill a sock with the sand and suck the moisture through it. I’m pleased to say they each used their own socks. Amid the parachuting and the zip-wiring through canyons they talk about life and faith and improv and failure. “Most people are terrified of failure,” says Grylls, but they shouldn’t be because “failure is a stepping stone”. It’s a good formula which makes for considered, non-shouty TV.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Engrossing though it was, I’d have liked to see more balance. Veteran music journalist Peter Guralnick published a biography of Colonel last year, and uncovered heartfelt letters from the manager to the star as Elvis’s crazed behaviour tore their partnership apart in the 1970s. But there was no padding. The Elvisologists, including Daily Mail writer Ray Connolly, offered a stream of insights and strong opinions. Colonel’s biographer Alanna Nash said, ‘He’s the only person I ever met who I felt was evil.’”
Christopher Stevems, Daily Mail