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‘SHARK WEEK’ ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL
A half-century ago one of the most terrifying films induced enough fright that in the summer of 1975 beachgoers were afraid to enter the ocean. “Jaws” was, and remains, a true blockbuster thriller.
On the Discovery Channel, “Shark Week” is an annual week-long festival about the seafaring apex predators that dates back to 1988. On Sunday, July 20, a jaw-dropping 20 hours of new specials will premiere.
“Dancing with Sharks,” hosted by Tom Bergeron, is a competition show unlike any other. For the first time ever, five divers compete to put together an amazing underwater routine with their toothy partners.
From hammerheads to tigers and nurse sharks, each shark has its own signature dance moves. Not known at this time is whether disco music is part of the score. At the end of the show, a winner is crowned – if all competitors make it that far.
Shark expert Alison Towner teams up with Shark Week legend Dickie Chivell to decode how killer whales take down great whites with ease in “Great White Assassins.” To get answers, the team travels to New Zealand and goes to the extreme, sending Dickie underwater to pose as an orca to see how the great whites react.
In what will they think of next, “Great White Sex Battle” is a Shark Week first, in which male and female great white sharks compete in a series to determine which sex is the superior predator in the waters off the coast of New Zealand. No mention of an awards ceremony for the winner.
“In the eye of the Storm: Shark Storm,” during the summer of 2024, dozens of cameras captured a rare outbreak of shark attacks along America’s gulf coast. Told through first-hand accounts of victims and eyewitnesses, nobody has seen all these perspectives unfold in real time until now.
“How to Survive a Shark Attack” finds shark attack survivor Paul de Gelder attempting the unthinkable – getting attacked by a shark, again. Useful information may come from this if you are in the ocean in Florida’s Volusia County or certain areas of Australia.
Under the supervision of experts, Paul provokes sharks to attack him in multiple scenarios, where they bite and tear off prosthetic limbs to teach life-saving tactics for surviving an encounter with nature’s deadliest predators.
“Great White Northern Invasion” reports on great white sharks finding a new home off the shore of Nova Scotia, Canada, where the water temperature is nothing like that of Australia or Florida.
With the waters in Canada now frothing with great whites, interactions with humans are on the rise. A team of scientists tracks down and tags the biggest sharks to uncover the sharkiest locations before there’s a fatal attack.
In “Expedition Unknown: Shark Files,” global adventurer Josh Gates solves some of the strangest and most disturbing shark mysteries of all time.
One such mystery is the real-life bloody inspiration for “Jaws” and the gruesome case of the Tiger Shark who vomited an arm while in captivity and ultimately helped police solve a murder mystery.
“Alien Sharks: Death Down Under” finds wildlife biologist Forrest Galante injecting himself with shark venom after diving down under into Australia’s dangerous waters, home to some of the weirdest alien-like and deadly sharks.
The biologist hopes this risky and potentially lethal experiment will bypass years of red tape to finally discover the potency of the venomous Port Jackson Shark and Ghost Shark.
We know that fifty years ago “Jaws” changed the beachgoing experience by striking fear into millions of Americans who vowed never to go into the water again. “Surviving Jaws” will explore myths and facts.
Marine biologist Tom “Blowfish” Hird and predator ecologist Michelle Jewell re-examine the movie and dive with Great Whites to separate fact from fiction by answering questions.
For one, does skinny dipping really attract great white sharks? Good question, but is it really a good idea to swim nude where you may not see what is swimming in the ocean? Also, could a monster shark chew through a boat’s hull?
Florida takes another hit with “Florida’s Death Beach,” which indicates that New Smyrna Beach (in Volusia County) has earned the title of “The Shark Attack Capital of the World,” accounting for 30% of the global shark attacks.
But why has the popular spring break’s party beach become so deadly? Wildlife biologist Forrest Galante (featured in another Shark Week program) and his team investigate before even more blood ends up in the water.
“Attack of the Devil Shark” tells the tale of a rogue tiger shark that attacks and kills a person in Saint Martin. Weeks later, the shark strikes again in this Caribbean paradise.
Locals fear it could be the work of the legendary Devil Shark — a massive and ruthless tiger shark who’s haunted their shores for decades. When a team sets out to track down the shark responsible for the attacks, they uncover a seismic force that may be triggering aggression in sharks.
There’s more to Shark Week than what’s reported here.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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‘THE WATERFRONT’ ON NETFLIX
Screenwriter, director, and producer Kevin Williamson, known for the screenplay for the slasher film “Scream” and TV drama series “Dawson’s Creek” and “The Vampire Diaries,” finds his life story to be inspiration for his creation of the Netflix streaming series “The Waterfront.”
The coast of North Carolina, where Williamson spent his high school years, is the setting for the story of the fictional Buckley family trying to hold on to their fishing empire through dangerously illegal means.
The parallel to the creator of “The Waterfront” is that his family’s patriarch, similar to the head of the Buckley clan, had to keep the family fishing business afloat by using his trawler to smuggle drugs to make ends meet.
In the fictional town of Havenport, Harlan Buckley (Holt McCallany) is the big fish in the community, running the largest fishery and an upscale restaurant that has been owned by the prominent family for generations.
Understanding the pivotal character of Harlan’s desperate return to illegal activity is rooted in the story of Williamson’s own father who found himself handling a financial predicament that resulted in being arrested and serving time.
Whether Williamson’s father was as complex as the flawed Harlan Buckley would probably make for a good story on its own, but that’s something for the show creator to contemplate if he ever thinks of doing a documentary that would likely be even more fascinating than fiction.
The opening scene takes place on a dark night when a boat is hijacked by gunmen who throw two men running the vessel into the sea in order to steal the $10 million in drugs waiting for pickup.
Harlan’s son Cane (Jake Weary) happens to find the boat washed up on shore, while police and DEA agents are on the scene. A bit of quick thinking has Cane scurrying over to the town clerk to backdate a transfer of the boat’s title to one of the missing crew members.
Meanwhile, Harlan the philanderer wakes up next to a girlfriend gripping his chest in pain as he suffers yet another heart attack. Harlan also has a penchant for whiskey any time of the day, much to the dismay of his wife Belle (Maria Bello).
The matriarch of the Buckley family appears to be the glue holding the family together in spite of their reckless behavior. While cunning in many ways, Belle can also fall prey to a shrewd developer taking advantage of her willingness to sell the family’s prime oceanfront land against Harlan’s wishes.
The most dysfunctional family member has to be Cane’s troubled sister Bree (Melissa Benoist), struggling with addiction that has caused her to lose custody of her teenage son Diller (Brady Hepner) that she’s not allowed to see without a court-appointed chaperone.
Bree’s bad decisions don’t just involve drugs and alcohol. She becomes romantically involved with DEA Special Agent Marcus Sanchez (Gerardo Celasco), who runs with his gut instinct that something is rotten in Havenport and it points to the Buckleys.
While Belle runs the restaurant business, Harlan and Cane stick to the seafood empire that slips back into drug-running. But the relationship between father and son is fraught with tension that even boils over into physical confrontations.
Central to the essence of the series’ drama is the turbulent relationship between a father who thinks his son is too soft and feckless and a son who feels his father, despite his tough demeanor, has lost a step in dealing with the family business.
As the episodes unfold, interesting characters come into the mix. Sheriff Clyde Porter (Michael Gaston) runs the town like a personal fiefdom, though mindful of Harlan’s influence. Topher Grace’s Grady is a shady character, and the less said about him the better lest spoilers ruin a surprising turn.
The eight episodes of “The Waterfront” are very tempting to binge-watch. A bit of patience is required in the early going as the story unfolds slowly while the introduction of essential characters carefully lays the foundation for a lot of twists and turns.
The series is a curious blend of soap opera drama and thrilling suspense. The drama can be compelling but also formulaic given how the Buckleys are tormented by betrayals, greed, dark secrets, and festering psychic wounds common to the genre.
“The Waterfront” is not unlike a soap opera like the long-running “Dallas,” where backstabbing, lust and greed create an emotional rollercoaster ride, except the oil empire drama largely avoided violence aside from J.R. Ewing being shot.
Indeed, the Buckley family is a dysfunctional mess as the result of simmering tensions between the parents themselves and with the offspring often untethered from responsibility and family bonds.
“The Waterfront” benefits from charismatic performances across the board, intriguing dialogue, a bevy of surprising twists, and proving to be far more entertaining than most of the current crop of streaming series.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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