TV Review: Oceans, BBC Two, Wednesday, 12 November, 8pm

By johnberesford on November 13th, 2008 7 comments

When the BBC get a new nature show on, it’s reasonable to get all excited. I was very excited about the prospect of new show Oceans (BBC Two, Wednesday, 12 November, 8pm). A fresh look at the deep sea, a new team of experts to befriend… new, wild facts… and… and… there’s no point dragging this out with pointless padding. This show was rubbish and I’m going to tell you all exactly what’s wrong with it…

Related: Oceans’ Trailer

Before I kick off, I know that Oceans had it’s work cut out. I mean, it’s competing, historically speaking, with the company that makes the best nature shows ever. That said, I offer no quarter. If I have an in-built quality control, then so should the Beeb, and the fact is, they’ve unleashed a turkey on the listings.

In the past, BBC nature shows have been really high-class. Attenborough has had a huge budget to play with, to make the collective eye melt in admiration and, lower down the rungs, nature shows have managed to make a lot out of smaller cinematography. Sadly, Oceans makes Meerkat Manor look like Planet Earth. Worse still, the camera work isn’t the main problem with the show.

Basically, this show isn’t really about nature. Instead of taking a step back, the assembled experts hog the camera and slap each other on the back and blurt trustafarian chortles out into the sea, constantly talking and constant whooping. They wonder, midway through, why there are no Hammerhead Sharks knocking about. They’d probably been scared off by the constant chattering of the team. Even when one bloke goes underwater, he’s still rabbiting on.

When they’re not being pally-pally, they’re telling you about how dangerous everything is. The narrator jumps in too, just in case you’d missed them talking about sudden deaths and the like. From the weird bubbleless underwater gear, to the marauding squid, they’re knocking on the reaper’s door all the time! Note to programme makers: You don’t see Attenborough programmes whining about that, because, the animals are supposed to be the star, not the crappy humans… and we all see humans all the time and they’re not that interesting!

When we do get to focus on the animals in this dumb-as-shit show, it’s pretty amazing. The Humboldt Squid is probably the most evil creature I’ve ever seen… and one of the coolest. Great big writhing things with huge beaky things and huge disgusting eyeballs and loads of barbs on their… get this… golden suckers! Of course, the team, ever so caring about the environment, prove a point by… getting out a fishing rod.

Yep, these bozos start catching squid and lobbing them on the side of their boat. Can you imagine watching Attenborough or Simon King fishing during a nature show? “Oh dear, I’ve taken a Kingfisher’s eye out… never mind… let’s take a look at that beautiful eye…”.

In short, this show was absolute garbage and I don’t advise watching next week, despite the fact it seems to have some really cool seahorses on. I’d get on Amazon and buy the Blue Planet boxset instead.

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Category: Documentary, TV Reviews
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Nick Stonier

I thought this offering was truly awful- the very epitome of dumbing down. The science was pseudo science at best. The team of “experts” seemed to conclude, on the basis of a couple of dives to one sea mount in a huge area of ocean the size of several countries, that because they hadn’t spotted any hammerhead sharks at that particular location, they “must have all disappeared due to over-fishing”. What rubbish.

Worse still, they claimed that the sea-lions had changed their feeding habits because they were now hunting sea bass, which apparently operate at a depth 5 metres below which the sea lions can normally be found hunting in. I’m no sea-lion expert, but excuse me? You’re trying to tell me that creatures the size of sea-lions are displaying somehow “unusual” behaviour or have developed a “new skill” simply because they’ve discovered that with an extra twist of a flipper they can find themselves 5 metres deeper in the water & pick up new prey?! Hilarious.

Wild brown (ferox) trout in Scottish lochs operate at different levels in the water depending on the time of year, age of the fish, and many, many other variables. The behaviour also differs from loch to loch- and is still not properly understood. Is it, therefore, so surprising, that ONE particular group of sea-lions has adapted to local conditions? Frankly, no it isn’t. Give me ten such studies from all around the world saying the same thing, then I’ll start to lend it some credence.

And, do we really need to see these people disporting themselves in the water on a day off? The whole show had a whiff of “White Squall” about it.

Yet another in the BBC’s long list of commissioned programmes consisting of how man is responsible for all the changes in animal behaviour/extinctions/global warming etc etc. I thought the BBC believed in Darwinism, evolution…

Like Horizon, this show is not serious science. It is a vehicle for Brand Cousteau to thrust itself back into public focus, together with a bunch of nonebrities from the University of NorthWest Suffolk or some such other serious academic insitution who look as though they’re either in their gap years, or should be backpacking round Goa in the 1960s.

Drivvle!
Stella

You’re so right about it all. I’ve never seen so many people so eager to tell you how brave and tough they are before heading off for a dive.

The sperm whales were pretty cool though.
anthony

This is one of the most dissapointing programmes I have ever seen, the concept of a nature programme centering around different diving techniques has high potential. This programme stank of a wealthy student’s holiday video blog, with the presenters justifying themselves with GCSE science experiments. If we put an egg somewhere hot, it will cook. Thanks for that.
As soon as the presenters hit the waters they are within seconds of immediate danger, when the crew lost a radio link with a dive his outlook was grim. What bloody difference does a radiolink make when this “presenter” is 30 odd meters under water with a camera crew?
Mike Nicholson

Agreed on all counts – and there’s much worse to reveal.

Some diving friends of mine – who have very close working ties with some senior staff at BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol – were recently given a graphic (and very pissed-off) description of how the Natural History Unit were effectively ‘cut out’ of the editorial process when OCEANS was going through post-production. It was entirely led by producers based in London, none of whom have experience in natural history television. The Natural History Unit staff – who supplied diving / wildlife cinematography expertise on the shoots – were then waved-away from any further input once back in the UK. Seemingly, some of the same people who worked on the likes of BLUE PLANET also worked on OCEANS, but their expertise was not used in the scripting stages or edit suite. As a result, the series is allegedly an entire shambles; an embarrassment for the Natural History Unit staff because of how BBC Science (London) constructed the series and ‘dumbed down’ the whole thing; and a scientific mess. I suspect a number of contributing scientists will feel grossly misrepresented if the first programme is anything to go by.

The Natural History Unit staff are also suggesting there are many issues with sequences being edited purely for dramatic effect or even bordering on fabrication of actual events for added impact. After the BBC’s furore earlier this year after being caught with false editing in factual programmes (remember The Queen?), I’ll be fascinated to see if OCEANS is also risking coming a cropper through similar ‘drama’ being added where none actually existed…. BBC should have learned to not do this!
http://giantsorbitting.blogspot.com/2008/11/oceans-outrage-viewers-are-patronised.html Sam Dixon

You are by no means alone – there’s been an almost universal damning of Oceans across the web!
Kent

Starting in 1974 my wife and I ran sea kayaking, diving and whale watching trips in the Sea of Cortez for nearly 20 years. We were eager to see the Oceans segment on the SoC and pretty damn disappointed. It was barely more credible than Survivor or The Biggest Loser. Lots of artificial drama with emphasis on the presenters, not the animals. And I shouldn’t pick on people’s accents, but the woman Marine biologist was almost unintelligible at times (and that was when she was on deck, properly miked the underwater babbling was just lost). And please people, learn to pronounce the place names like the locals, it’s not that hard. They really looked foolish in the segment of diving on the “illegal immigrant ship”. That was so utterly contrived.

The previous post about how clueless producers are responsible is EXACTLY what we speculated had happened. Phillipe Cousteau must be squirming a bit.
Timlad4

This programme had me cringing as natural history viewer and has a active marine researcher. The presenters and the narrator make such over stated, unfounded statements and attribute scientific discovery to the presenters, when all they do is look at stuff and talk about how wonderful everything is. It totally misrepresents what science IS and how it is undertaken. Are these people experts or have they just done lots of diving and can talk to a camera? They talked
about and filmed scallop fishing in the Sea of Cortez but…they were not scallops but actually fan mussels. This programme tries to set its self up as a research expedition led by four ‘experts’ , it is not. Nature, science and the facts about it is interesting and in their own right. This format of programme with 4 ‘experts’ detracts from the real show of the natural world.