Critters gone wild: When TV shows attack

Just when you thought it was safe to turn on the TV again, it's time for attack of the critter shows.

The big kahuna of critter shows is Discovery Channel's "Shark Week," which it's been pimping as the greatest TV event since ... well, TV. This week we were blessed with SyFy's Sharknado 2: The Second One, a movie so bad it's good, or so I hear. I recorded it for viewing later. At least we knowSharknado wasn't a documentary.

Remember when critter shows pretty much were Saturday or Sunday afternoon fare serving as filler between golf tournaments, or leading into evening programs? I always liked how Marlin Perkins left Jim Fowler to wrestle the giant anaconda while he went to check on the cute little furry squirrel.

Well, as you might expect, that's changed.

The really big thing is to show us critters gone wild. Networks think folks want to see lions battling elephants and giraffes, polar bears shredding seals and walruses, monstrous fish lurking just beneath tranquil waters. And apparently they do, based on the growing number of critters gone wild shows. These ain't your mama's Wild Kingdom.

Animal Planet has lots of cute and fluffy shows, as well as inspirational and educational ones. It's also home to River Monsters,Monsters Inside Me, Monsters in My Head and Infested!, to name a few. These shows definitely will have you pulling your feet off the floor and your skin crawling as you watch.

River Monsters basically is just another fishing show, only on steroids. Make that super steroids. It features Jeremy Wade, a British guy who travels around the world fishing for monster fish, naturally. Not record-setting fish — although he has landed a few whoppers — but fish of myth and legend, the ones few people have seen but are purported to be either huge, vicious, or both. Armed with a trusty rod and reel, he wades into waters where others fear to go (or maybe have the sense to stay out of) on a quest for strange and bizarre water dwellers.

This guy has hauled in fish with teeth that could pierce a Volkswagen, and mouths that could swallow one. Whole. He catches nasty, mean, people-eating aquatic beasts that could make you hesitant to go into the water again. I wonder if he'd come here to fish for the legendary giant catfish that supposedly dwell at the bottom of the lake near Norfork and Bull Shoals dams?

Those other shows are just creepy. They're usually re-enacted but with the actual victims on hand to tell their stories. You can see what it's like to have giant blowfly larvae growing beneath your skin, or insidious tiny worms crawling around your eyes, not that I really want to know. Icky as that is, the one about people's homes being invaded by ants, snakes, cockroaches, spiders and other creep-crawlies really gets me. I don't want to raise the toilet seat to find it filled with writhing snakes. I don't even like finding what's supposed to be there, let alone something like that.

"Shark Week," however, is the granddaddy of critters-attack TV. It's Discovery Channel's cornerstone. Think watching shows about sharks can get boring? Well, yeah, if they're just about sharks doing what sharks do — swim and eat. But these shows ramp up the critter attack factor, even if as with last year's Megladon they blend fact and fiction (heavy on fiction) and present it as a documentary.

And even if the shows get boring, their names sure don't: Sharkageddon, Zombie Sharks, Lair of the Mega Shark, Monster Hammerhead, Spawn of Jaws 2: The Birthand Megalodon: The New Evidence. With titles like those, you'd think it was the SyFy channel.

Even the National Geographic folks have gotten in on the act. Monster Fish is its show with an angler traveling the globe in search of the largest freshwater fish in the world. World's Deadliest Predators "looks at the most riveting moments of animal predation," AKA critters fighting and eating other critters.

Not to be outdone, NatGeo has "Sharkfest," a week of programs about ... what else? NatGeo's titles may not be as sensational, but they're not bad: The Whale That Ate Jaws: Bite-sized, Panic in Paradise, Shark Kill Zone, Florida Frenzy, California Sharksand Sharks: Planet Carnivore. Some of these sound like pulp novel titles.

So, just when you thought summer was getting boring, you can settle in with the popcorn and beverage of choice and watch critters go crazy. Who knows, maybe SyFy will get into the picture with a movie about two rival networks trying to outdo one another with nature shows run amok, something like Megalodon & Zombie Sharks vs. Planet Carnivore. Yeah, and it'll be a documentary.