The “unforgiving” Welsh terrain gives competitors on Channel 4’s new series of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins a true experience of special forces training, according to the show’s chief instructor Billy Billingham.
Other series have been filmed in locations including Vietnam, Chile and Morocco but celebrity contestants like dancer Louie Spence find themselves on an Anglesey beach in Sunday’s opening episode.
“It’s beautiful, of course, but it’s unforgiving. It’s a great test ground,” said Billingham.
“It’s a birthplace of the special forces, the SAS, where we do all our training in Wales.”
Contestants include former footballer Troy Deeney, TV’s The Traitors winner Harry Clark, drag artist and DJ Bimini, and musicians like Lucy Spraggan among others.
“We’ve been wanting to come home, as we call it, for a long time, because the fact that they’re just in Wales is a test in itself,” said Billingham.
“You can have four seasons in one day.
“It sounds exotic to go to New Zealand and Australia and all these places.
“But it was great to come home. It offers everything we want,” he told Lucy Owen on BBC Radio Wales.
While one of the previous series of the non-celebrity version of the show was filmed in Wales, it is also the latest location for the seventh series of the show with celebrity recruits.
Billingham would not reveal any spoilers but said contestants’ “true character” is exposed once they are are pushed to what they perceive to be their limit – and beyond.
Programme makers said the recruits faced the “hardest course yet, in the most gruelling stages of SAS selection”.
Led by Billingham and directing staff ex-special forces soldiers Jason Fox, Rudy Reyes and Chris Oliver, the recruits use a speed boat to stage a hostage rescue mission in Sunday’s opening episode on Channel 4 from 21:00 BST.
