Whatever nausea one feels at the prospect of Steve Irwin being highlighted in a post mortem uncommon — named “Sea’s Deadliest,” after “the Crocodile Hunter” was killed by something dangerous in the sea — before long melts away watching Irwin do what he adored with all the standard zeal. As it were, Irwin’s entire shtick was tied in with playing with death as he passed on his enthusiasm for extraordinary monsters, and seeing what film remained demonstrates a fitting-enough memorial, joined with a more strict half-hour accolade for the Discovery star.
The one genuine downside in “Sea’s Deadliest,” indeed — being simulcast by Discovery and sister net Animal Planet — includes not Irwin but rather Philippe Cousteau Jr., the grandson of acclaimed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, who follows along on this experience investigating the different risks living along the Australian reefs and fills in as its storyteller.
Tall and tan, the youthful Cousteau attempts to catch a similar golly responses to entering waters with incredible white sharks (“Amazing!”) or packaging noxious fish to separate their toxin, yet his interjections feel constrained and unnatural — in some difference to Irwin’s wild-man persona, anyway very much practiced that may have been.
There’s an intriguing union here, really, between the Cousteau name and that of Irwin, since Jacques’ work gave an impressive, standard-setting partner to the blend of commending nature and showbiz razzmatazz that Irwin (included here on board his boat, Croc One) brought to comparative material, taking the “Wild Kingdom” approach — watching our hosts wrestle and label something hazardous — to new limits that reverberated with assumptions and abundances of the cutting edge TV age.
Maybe most clearly, it’s a decent bet Irwin would have needed each and every shot of him in real life took advantage of some place, and Discovery has obliged. (The “Deadliest” spec doesn’t show anything in regards to his demise.)
Furthermore, with that, so long, Croc Hunter. All that unbridled excitement will absolutely be missed even by those of us who favored the alleviating rhythms of the first Cousteau’s undersea world, just to see them cleared away by the predominant tides.
