The Jeff Corwin Experience – Season One (Animal Planet DVD)
Picture: B Sound: B Extras: C
Episodes: A
The world
of cable television never lacks for nature shows. The history of television before the days of
cable features Mutual of Omaha's Wild
Kingdom with Marlin Perkins and his trusty, water-buffalo castrating, snake
wrangling sidekick. Several years ago
Animal Planet introduced cable audiences to a quirky, irreverent, but
undeniably sincere naturalist and biologist named Jeff Corwin. His unique blend of oddball humor, dynamism,
boyish good looks, and scientific knowledge made The Jeff Corwin Experience fun
to watch. How many other naturalists
will break into a tremendous Arnold Schwarzenegger routine while covered in bat
guano and holding a giant, massively muscled, cave-dwelling frog?
All of the episodes in this three-disc set are wonderful, but Corwin's trips to
Borneo, India, and Africa stand out as some of the best. As a handler of dangerous animals, Corwin
doesn't spook often, but his run-in with a cobra in India unnerves him, and he
speaks of it frankly in his own inimitable style. His sometimes hilarious asides to his camera
crew also make for must-see viewing.
Picture and sound on this package are sharp enough to convey all of the color
and majesty of the amazing places Corwin visits. The camera work in this show is phenomenal,
and the sites and sounds seem tailor-made for an HD or Blu-Ray version. Extras on this set are thin, and knowing
Corwin's quirky sense of humor, it would have been great to see some of the
many bloopers the show must have generated.
The Jeff Corwin Experience still
stands today as some of the funniest, genuinely moving nature television ever
produced. While Corwin has since moved
on to the other projects (his new show, CORWIN'S
QUEST), The Jeff Corwin Experience
lives on as one of the great wildlife shows in television history.
- Scott R. Pyle
