Sometimes I get the feeling that Discovery doesn’t think as many viewers will be tuning in on Friday and Saturday nights. Josh Gates Tonight (and Shark After Dark in previous years) only runs Sunday to Thursday. And the celebrity episodes only run from Sunday to Thursday (although the re-runs happen on the weekend). And all of the better programming seems to be on those early days of the week too. By Friday, the quality starts to drop a little (see the last show I write about in this post). I mean, there’s a pandemic going on – it’s not like people really have a whole lot to do on Friday and Saturday nights anymore. Do normal people not devote their Fridays and Saturdays to sharks? Just me? Ok.
Alien Sharks: First Contact: Two teams of researchers and fishermen search through three alien shark hot spots for creatures from the deep. In Japan, Dr. Mareike Dornhege is looking for a frilled shark. In Alaska, Alien Sharks regular Paul Clerkin is on the hunt for sleeper sharks; and then he moves on to Hawaii to look for cookie cutter sharks. Although the researchers are looking for these three specific sharks, they find lots of other cool and unique alien sharks along the way. I love this series because it showcases so many different kinds of sharks that you don’t typically hear that much about. It’s a nice change of pace compared to all of the shows about, say, great whites. I always get to see and learn new things when I watch Alien Sharks. This year, the show featured footage of a live birth of 20 shark pups!
Lair of the Great White: Off the coast of Salisbury Island, Craig O’Connell and Marc Payne lead a team to investigate the hunting styles of the great white sharks who spend their time off the West Coast of Australia. The reason for this mission is because of the fact that there are more fatal shark attacks along the West Coast than any other part of Australia. So… Basically the same premise as Great White Double Trouble from a couple of nights ago. Lair of the Great White is undoubtedly the stronger of the two episodes, and the science and research is far more thorough. This makes me wonder why we even needed Great White Double Trouble in the first place. Did Discovery run out of ideas at the last minute?
Tiger Shark King: Well, it was inevitable. With the popularity of Tiger King during the early weeks of the pandemic, I can’t say I’m surprised that Discovery has piggybacked off of the Netflix special when it came to naming a Shark Week special about tiger sharks. In the Bahamas, Dr. Austin Gallagher, Jimi Partington, and Christine DaSilva explore the area known as “The Tongue of the Ocean”. They’re following tiger sharks as they swim through these mysterious and deep parts of the ocean. Not only are they hoping to observe if the sharks act and hunt differently at those depths, but they are also investigating a mysterious predator that’s attacking tiger sharks down there. Seeing all of the footage from the deep was really cool. And it was great to even see one of the sharks that had been on Alien Sharks. It turns out, there are a lot of different kinds of sharks living at depth. This was such an interesting episode because even though tiger sharks are standard fare on Shark Week, this show presented a different way of looking at them.
I Was Prey: Shark Week 2: When I was younger, and first getting interested in Shark Week, these kinds of shark attack episodes were a lot more common. I also found them really fascinating because those kinds of shows were how I was learning about sharks. However, I no longer find these kinds of shows as interesting as I used to. There are other, better, shows I can watch to learn about sharks that don’t involve fear mongering. And after seeing so many shark attack shows, they all start to feel the same after a while. There’s not a lot that could surprise me in a show like this. Besides, the I Was Prey series isn’t even the strongest of the shark attack shows. It’s just two people going back and forth sharing their attack stories. There are no expert interviews and there’s no analysis to look at the science behind the attacks. There’s just nothing to really keep me interested and engaged. If these kinds of episodes are someone else’s way of getting into Shark Week like when I was younger, great. But personally, I just don’t have as much patience for these shows anymore. I just want more science and more sharks.
