BBC's Nature's Weirdest Events
We love Chris Packham.
Review
Is it just us, or does telly of late seem to be swamped by
sensationalism? Bilge competes with bilge in the form of reality,
scripted reality and invasive voyeuristic “documentaries”. Audiences
these days want freak-shows with titles so crude they could easily be
mistaken for Daily Mail headlines, such as: “My Monkey Baby,” “Accused:
The 74 Stone Babysitter,” and “My Daughter The Teenage Nudist”. In
this, the Jeremy Kyle-era of television, we find ourselves hooked on
tutting, gloating and moralising (much like Daily Mail readers, in
fact).
In the midst of this ocean of celluloid crap, sometimes the occasional lifebuoy floats past in the shape of a credible documentary which treats its subjects sensitively and investigates its topic intelligently, or a well-written and well-acted drama which demands a more kind of cerebral engagement and empathy from its audience.
Then there are those programmes that occupy the middle ground between trash and virtuosity such as the BBC's two-part series "Nature's Weirdest Events". Think: David Attenborough's "Planet Earth" meets "Holidays from Hell". Chris Packham, the erstwhile face of childhood TV classic "Really Wild Show", narrates the programme with as much verve and glee as he did back in the day when Itchy was knee-high to a grasshopper, or in keeping with the topic of weird nature, when Itchy was knee-high to a mutant grasshopper/pig with insect arms and furry snout.
"Nature's Weirdest Events" showcased nowt as horrifying as the weird nature that lives in the dark corners of Itchy's twisted imagination, though there was plenty to shock and wow. Trash-lovers will have been delighted by the exploding frogs (you'll never look at a frog the same way again), the parasite that eats fish tongues (never again will you so casually buy fresh fish without anxiously inspecting its mouth), and the day Sydney turned red (this one will actually make you want to go to Sydney in the hope of witnessing this phenomenon live). Any Attenborough buffs watching the show will have been equally satisfied with the abundance of scientific hypotheses, the educated reasoning of these bizarre events, and speccy scientists gushing about how “exciting” tongue-eating parasites are.
So there you have it. Not all telly has to be about hooking oversexed illiterates up to lie-detector machines and sneering at them. Itchy would rather watch combusting amphibians any day.
Rosa Meekums
In the midst of this ocean of celluloid crap, sometimes the occasional lifebuoy floats past in the shape of a credible documentary which treats its subjects sensitively and investigates its topic intelligently, or a well-written and well-acted drama which demands a more kind of cerebral engagement and empathy from its audience.
Then there are those programmes that occupy the middle ground between trash and virtuosity such as the BBC's two-part series "Nature's Weirdest Events". Think: David Attenborough's "Planet Earth" meets "Holidays from Hell". Chris Packham, the erstwhile face of childhood TV classic "Really Wild Show", narrates the programme with as much verve and glee as he did back in the day when Itchy was knee-high to a grasshopper, or in keeping with the topic of weird nature, when Itchy was knee-high to a mutant grasshopper/pig with insect arms and furry snout.
"Nature's Weirdest Events" showcased nowt as horrifying as the weird nature that lives in the dark corners of Itchy's twisted imagination, though there was plenty to shock and wow. Trash-lovers will have been delighted by the exploding frogs (you'll never look at a frog the same way again), the parasite that eats fish tongues (never again will you so casually buy fresh fish without anxiously inspecting its mouth), and the day Sydney turned red (this one will actually make you want to go to Sydney in the hope of witnessing this phenomenon live). Any Attenborough buffs watching the show will have been equally satisfied with the abundance of scientific hypotheses, the educated reasoning of these bizarre events, and speccy scientists gushing about how “exciting” tongue-eating parasites are.
So there you have it. Not all telly has to be about hooking oversexed illiterates up to lie-detector machines and sneering at them. Itchy would rather watch combusting amphibians any day.
Rosa Meekums
