Bandersnatch was fine. Better than fine, in fact. It was bold, it was inventive, it pushed a new method of interactive storytelling into the mainstream. But it failed in one key area: it wasn’t specifically about trying to murder Bear Grylls.

Fortunately, Netflix seems to have remedied this. Today the platform released You vs Wild; a Bear Grylls documentary series where you call the shots. Bear is caught in the snow. He’s tracking a missing doctor in the jungle. He’s trying to escape a haunted mine. He’s an expert at survival. You are some idiot watching Netflix in your pants. And yet, for some reason, you’ve been put in charge of all his decisions.

And that’s a huge mistake, obviously, because I guarantee that every single person who tries You vs Wild will do it for one reason and one reason only; to murder Bear Grylls in as grisly a manner as possible.

Of course you want to murder Bear Grylls. The entire point of his existence on Earth is to watch him suffer. In every TV show he’s ever made he’s had to drink his own pee or crawl inside a rancid camel corpse or suck all the moisture from a wad of elephant dung. It’s disgusting, but that is what Bear Grylls is for. Regardless of the situation that You vs Wild presents, you will automatically choose the most extreme option, because all human DNA is encoded with a primal desire to harm Bear Grylls.

This brings us to the biggest fault of You vs Wild. I’ve played through three of the eight episodes, and so far the man is unkillable. It’s infuriating. It doesn’t matter what you do – wear him out too quickly, plunge his core temperature to a dangerous low, prod him along a series of undeniably rickety rope bridges – the git manages to get out in one piece. The entire series is defined by a total, deafening lack of jeopardy.

I don’t want to see basic competency, for crying out loud. What am I, an animal? ... You vs Wild. Photograph: Netflix

Twice I came close to doing him in. In the space of a single episode I forced him to eat a toxic earthworm and rappel down a cliff without enough rope to get to the bottom, and both times I ran into an almighty cop-out; in the first case he spat out the worm and told me not to be silly, and in the second he called for a helicopter to rescue him. That is not what anyone wants. I want graphic, real-time footage of Bear Grylls vomiting and diarrhoeaing himself. I want to see him tumble down a 50-foot granite drop while his bones snap and his organs pop. I don’t want to see basic competency, for crying out loud. What am I, an animal?

Part of the problem is that the options we’re presented with are far too mild. For example, in one scene Bear has to traverse an ice field: your choices are either to make him walk across it or crawl across it. Where’s the option to make him riverdance? Where’s the bellyflop choice? Why isn’t there a scene of Bear Grylls begging the audience not to send him to his inevitable death? Why doesn’t he treat us like the malicious all-powerful authority we obviously are? Cower, Grylls! Cower in eternal torment before our whims! Let the murderous winds of our infinite cruelty tear the skin from your bones, for we are naught but gods! GODS!

But no. Walk on the ice or crawl on the ice. Either way, he’s getting out in one piece. Yawn.

Netflix has ploughed an extraordinary amount of money into this interactive technology, so now really is a critical time. Unless something of real quality is made soon, Bandersnatch will end up looking like a gimmicky one-off. To be clear, You vs Wild is no Bandersnatch. But perhaps there’s a message here for Netflix. If you really want to normalise interactivity, just make sure there’s always an option to murder Bear Grylls.