Discovery is apparently seeing solid viewership with their survival shows since they recently premiered yet another survival show, this time titled Man, Woman, Wild. The premier episode was last week and was filmed in the Amazon, while this week’s episode was based in Africa. I just caught both episodes and the show, like every other survival show they have, is pretty entertaining but not exactly chock full of really useful info. The show features a married couple, Mykel and Ruth Hawke.
It took me about 15 minutes to get over Mykel Hawke’s (real name) voice, which sounds like it should be voicing over an action movie’s trailer. His constantly furrowed brow matches his always serious tone quite well. He does seems to know his stuff, has a respectable background, and is not a complete drama queen like Monsieur Grylls. The show paints his wife as clueless, but her background indicates that she has been in some pretty crappy places in her life as a journalist, so she is no slouch either.
I have seen several people on the Intarwebs comment that the wife cries too much and is overacting. My response to that is that those guys are obviously not married. As a married man, I can 100% say that my wife would negatively react to my wanting to slaughter a cute puttering turtle, having animals infiltrate our shelter in the pitch black night, hacking the leg off of a freshly killed wildebeest while a lion is prowling about, seeing her husband wrestle a boa constrictor, etc. Most dudes I know would cry just as fast. She is not a survival expert, so I will have to throw some respect her way for doing all of that in the first place, even if there is a camera and support crew out there with them. After watching the behind the scenes episode for Man vs Wild, the camera crew is not really any better off than the people on camera.
I will keep on watching, even if just for the sheer entertainment value. I will say that if you decided to have a drinking game based on how many times Mykel says “baby,” you would be passed out drunk in about 10 seconds.