River Monsters is a very scary show. It’s a series about huge fresh water fish – with names like the Goonch (you immediately know its going to be nasty) and the Piraiba. Then there is the Goliath Tiger Fish and the Giant Fresh Water Sting Ray. These are fish unlike anything you have seen before, all teeth and spines and each with a reputation for not only maiming and killing – but also sometimes consuming their human victims. They grow to unfeasibly large proportions, look like extra-terrestrials and inhabit rivers such as the Congo and the Amazon – far, far from the nearest Holiday Inn, Best Western or Chinese Take-Away. But the really, really scary thing about making this series is having to deliver one of these monsters in each show. This means that the presenter – extreme angler, biologist and adventurer, Jeremy Wade, has to actually catch one and wind it in on his reel.
Following the huge success of Jeremy Wade's River Monsters series in the US (highest ever audience figures in the history of Animal Planet) it is now showing on ITV1 in the UK. These half-hour programmes air on Thursday evenings at 7.30pm. A second season is also in production, featuring an all-new cast of outsize and outlandish fish. This will be broadcast on Animal Planet US from April 2010.
It’s a moment of television gold – and unlike some other television shows that Jeremy would be far too polite to mention, nothing is faked. It all happens in the camera and for real. The only trouble is that Jeremy has to perform this stunt every week and do so in genuinely harsh conditions.