I am obsessive about sharks. Fifty years on from Jaws, and for me no movie can contact it. I trawl YouTube for unspeakable footage. On a latest vacation to France, I made my nonplussed family watch each shark documentary on Nationwide Geographic. I’ll even find time for guff like Jaws 4 or Sharknado 5: International Swarming. I’m metaphorically chumming the water at each alternative. Once in a while, one thing reveals up.
Shark! Movie star Infested Waters (ITV1, Wednesday 16 July, 9pm) sees seven public figures with a worry of sharks mercilessly pushed into the water to swim with some. Say no extra – I’m hooked. The victims – sorry, individuals – embody Lenny Henry, Lucy Punch, Ross Noble and the bassist from McFly. I like a few of these folks very a lot, and hope they don’t thoughts that I’d love them to be ripped in half and devoured in excessive definition, thrashing about in a vortex of reddening water. It’s nothing private.
It’s additionally unlikely, because the present is being aired. (Except they began with eight contestants.) We’re, post-Jaws, extra ecologically aware. There can be huge complaints if the present offered the sharks as primeval nightmare gas, though that’s what they’re, what ITV desires them to be and what we would like them to be. It feels one way or the other subversive when the persistently hilarious Lucy Punch publicizes, “I don’t love sharks. I feel they’re savage tubes of enamel.”
The present is aware of that’s why we love them. You’ll be able to really feel it straining in opposition to its ethical crucial to coach us as to why these beasts are principally innocent, crucial and misunderstood. “Sharks are the custodians of the ocean,” an professional posits at one level. “They handle the sick, dying and injured.” I think about this is identical manner I “handle” all of the burgers at a barbecue, or foam shrimps at a choose ’n’ combine; I don’t image the sharks in a Florence Nightingale cap. However the programme doesn’t elaborate, so who’s to say.
Within the first hour alone, the celebs expertise a rattling encounter with bulls, an alarming flirtation with stingrays, and a frenzy of lemons. They’re principally uncaged – which doesn’t imply they’re all in the identical boat. Paralympian Ade Adepitan does all the things the others do with twice the extent of bodily problem, whereas actor Helen George has a phobia of water itself, and hasn’t bought in previous her knees in 20 years. McFly clearly isn’t afraid of something, and possibly solely mentioned he was so he might have a free diving vacation.
I do marvel what the sharks make of this. Can they really feel the burden of all our psychic projections? Is that why they don’t sleep? In that sense, Movie star Infested Waters is a brilliantly cheeky subtitle, flipping the POV. Fame is the alternative of being a shark, actually. Irrationally beloved, a variety of celebrities are terrible when you perceive them.
“That is the realest factor I’ve ever carried out – and I’ve carried out panto in Lewisham” quips Henry because the sharks circle. The actors and comedians are fairly charming, and banter gamely on boats, as they overcome their aversion. Nevertheless it’s George in whom we’re invested. She appears to be like unwell. It’s a reminder that true worry just isn’t visually dramatic. It’s a tense illness that grips, a non-public expertise of making an attempt to maintain an ego from utterly fragmenting. I discover her panic assault in a cage extra affecting and actual than any quantity of screaming, and I hope she’s OK.
I’m certain she’s heading for epiphany, Punch will study to like her tubes, and Rachel Riley will probably be sudoku-ing with a pyjama shark on the finish of 5 episodes. Most individuals don’t wish to cease being afraid of sharks, although. The extra handy our lives turn into, the extra we yearn to think about overwhelming forces. There’s a paradoxical vitality to it. This fact by no means undermines the significance of marine protections, curbing man’s barbarism, or our industrial predation of the pure world. I’m all the time on the animals’ aspect.
Fortunately – and with out spoilers – I can reveal that one of many celebrities does get bitten by a shark within the first episode, and there’s a lot of screaming, so everybody’s a winner.
