He has help

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Appearing before a room full of TV critics, "Man vs. Wild" star Bear Grylls answered question after question about what we don't see on his show — the guys who are with him when he's experiencing his Big Adventures.

And Grylls said he found it "interesting ... that there's so many questions" about the two off-camera guys who follow his every footstep.

"I'm always really keen to include them," he said. "And I've done so many shots in the early days of turning the camera around and going, 'Look at Simon. He's exhausted.' And it often gets sort of cut."

The show's producers have chosen to focus on Grylls and what he's doing. But as the show enters a new season (tonight at 10 on the Discovery Channel), things are going to change just a bit.

"I think we're getting bolder now," he said. "In this last season we filmed, we're beginning to sort of include them much more because I think people are interested."

Right after the season premiere, which takes Grylls to the Sahara, Grylls takes a bit of departure with "Bear's Everest" (11 p.m., Discovery). He travels to the Himalayas, where he attempts to fly a powered paraglider higher than Mount Everest.

Grylls doesn't have a huge crew along with him as he's dropped in the middle of nowhere and has to find his way out.

"I have a cameraman and a sound man, Simon (Reay) and Paul (Ritz), who are the guys who are with me pretty well about 98 percent of the time," he said. "And then we have a base camp set up as close as we can get it — maybe two minutes by chopper."

There are, of course, more people at that base camp, including "all the production guys, a director, all the local rangers, experts, assistant director, that kind of stuff. ... They might occasionally drop in and do stuff, but the guys who are really with me most of the time are Simon and Paul."

They do "almost everything" that Grylls does.

"Really, they're the big heroes, I think, behind this," Grylls said. "We picked them from a load of different applicants at the start, and I really wanted to work with the same two people. They've become real friends through the series."

They're not with Grylls 100 percent of the time, however.