Netflix to drop Celebrity Bear Hunt episodes in one go

Netflix is to drop the entire run of Bear Grylls and Holly Willoughby-fronted adventure competition show Celebrity Bear Hunt at once when it launches on 5 February. 

The format is co-produced by The Bridge indie Workerbee and Too Hot to Handle label Talkback, alongside Grylls’ The Natural Studios.  

It marks Netflix’s first major move into high-profile adventure competition shows and joins similar commissions such as Minnow’s Channel 4 stalwart Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins and ITV’s big bet on Banijay format The Summit. 

Celebrity Bear Hunt follows a group of unlikely British celebrities who are dropped into the Central American jungle and hunted down by Grylls, with those captured eliminated from the show. 

Contestants include former tennis star Boris Becker, America’s Got Talent judge and former Spice Girl Mel B, TV chef and presenter Big Zuu, presenter Steph McGovern and The Inbetweeners star Joe Thomas.  

With Banijay’s Workerbee and Fremantle’s Talkback teaming up, Netflix UK is again using indie heavyweights to create a large-scale reality show – as it did with Studio Lambert and The Garden’s competition Squid Game: The Challenge. 

However, in launching with all eight episodes available at once, the streamer is bucking convention on how traditional whittle formats have been broadcast, especially in the UK where companies have sought to keep audiences hooked as they look to create ‘event TV’.  

Recent Netflix tentpole unscripted series such as Love Is Blind in the US and Studio Lambert and The Garden’s 10-episode competition Squid Game: The Challenge have staggered the release of episodes in batches.

The latter was dropped in three batches: the first five episodes on 22 November, the following four a week later, with the finale coming on 6 December. 

A similar strategy was used on the 12-ep Love is Blind S7, with the streamer launching the first six episodes on 2 October. It then released a three-episode batch on 9 October, followed by two episodes the following week, and the finale on 23 October – overall a four-batch release. 

Big UK unscripted shows including legacy programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing and more recent smashes like competition hit The Traitors S3 are stripped over three days each week on BBC1, with episodes only going onto iPlayer after they air.  

Last week, Broadcast reported The Traitors S3 had broken its own viewership records for its launch ep, with 8.8m tuning into the curtain raised over seven days.

In doing a deal for WWE wrestling’s Raw, which is released on a Monday, Netflix is doing scheduled releases, but the binge model or programming blocks looks to be its plan moving forward.