Wild Deep
By Emily Ashby,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Oceanic nature series spotlights curious creatures.
A Lot or a Little?
What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.
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What's the Story?
WILD DEEP is a six-part nature series that explores the ocean in search of its most unusual inhabitants and fascinating stories. Sweeping landscapes of the Coral Triangle, surprising adaptations that give the ocean's tiny residents a fighting chance, rare footage of a slumbering whale pod -- these moments and more comprise this remarkable glimpse into a world that's churning with activity and, in many cases, is still waiting to be discovered.
Is It Any Good?
The goal of Wild Deep is obvious: Scan the ocean for the wacky and weird, and capture footage of them in action. In this way, it's more like Ripley's Believe It or Not! than it is like a more serious series like Planet Earth, and the show's brisk pace and 30-minute format (short for the standard nature documentary) reflect this style. At times it's unsettling, ushering you so quickly from one oceanic oddity to the next that you get little more than a three-sentence explanation of what you're watching. The upside is that you're introduced to a range of species and examples of animal specialization in a short amount of time, but this comes at the price of thorough reporting on the subjects themselves.
That's not to say that Wild Deep has nothing to offer viewers. It does what it can with what it's given: a truncated time frame on one hand and the planet's most expansive animal habitat on the other. What you get are amazing images of life forms large and small, each of which is specifically adapted to eat, reproduce, and evade predators. It's a fascinating tour of some of the ocean's hot spots, and ultimately it does its difficult job well enough that you're left wanting more of what it has to offer.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the educational value of series like this one. Is there anything to be learned from a documentary that you can't find in another form of media? Does information seem more interesting if you get it from TV?
Take a trip to a nearby aquarium, zoo, or even your own backyard and learn about your local ecology. How are animals specifically adapted to thrive in certain environments?
Choose a species or two featured on the show and do your own research about it. What contributes to this animal's ability to survive? What outside factors could threaten it or its habitat?
TV Details
- Premiere date: January 22, 2013
- Cast: Dave Fennoy
- Network: Animal Planet
- Genre: Educational
- Topics: Ocean Creatures, Science and Nature
- TV rating: TV-PG
- Last updated: September 14, 2021
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