“I think if someone had told me eight years ago that I would still be doing this now, I would have trouble believing them. Originally it was going to be just one program,” says Jeremy Wade, host and star of River Monsters. “When Animal Planet came back to us and said how about a series of these, I wasn’t even sure we could make even a handful more.” Fast-forward to today and River Monsters is the most successful show in Animal Planet’s history. Last year’s season premiere was the most-watched season debut ever for Animal Planet, with 1.7 million viewers tuning in to watch Wade angle in extreme conditions.
While the show’s premise sounds dull on paper – man goes fishing in remote location – River Monsters is anything but. “It’s not a fishing show; it’s not primarily about the process of fishing,” said Wade. “It’s about the story and the investigation and then producing the creature at the end. By making it an underwater detective story, we were hoping to open it up beyond just people who like to fish.”
For the last six seasons, fans have tuned in as Wade travels to a far-flung location in order to solve a murder mystery, almost as a roving one-man Law & Order: Fish Unit. The stories are horrifying in their similarity – a young boy is attacked by a mysterious predator while swimming in the Amazon, or a full grown man is pulled into the Congo by an unseen monster – but they rarely feel repetitious. Each time, Wade takes up his fishing gear and is on the case, eager to solve the mystery and unveil the monsters that lie beneath.
It is compelling television that has continued to draw in viewers week after week, season after season. As the show gets ready to kick off its seventh season on Sunday, it has done something that few reality series have been able to do: remain a monster hit.
The secret to the show’s ongoing success boils down to two words: Jeremy Wade.
“No one else could do this,” said Animal Planet executive producer Lisa Lucas. “You can’t pop anyone else in his shoes and have the same result. I think a lot of other fishing shows have tried.”
Lucas thinks Wade’s appeal lies in his believability. “He is absolutely authentic,” said Lucas. “It’s clear that if he wasn’t fishing for us and with our cameras, he would be off fishing by himself somewhere. Viewers have a good nose for authenticity, and he is the perfect embodiment of that.”
While Wade clearly loves his work, it frequently looks flat-out miserable, as he guards a fishing line, sitting for hours through torrential downpours or blistering heat as mosquitos assault him, all in the hope that he catches not just a fish, but a rarely seen monster. And if he fails in his mission? As his producer said: “If we don’t have a fish at the end, we don’t have a show.”
On the season opener of River Monsters, Wade comes incredibly close to throwing in the towel, casting line after line after line in pursuit of a muskellunge, or muskie, a highly aggressive fish that haunts the lakes and rivers of North America. It’s that tension that keeps viewers tuning in. “There’s an unpredictability about River Monsters. We can hope for a specific catch and have an idea of the kind of story we want to tell, but until he pulls something out of the water, we don’t know,” said Lucas. “But that’s the beauty and the challenge.”
While fearsome sea monsters have been well represented in history and folklore, for Wade, fresh water has always been where the real fish drama lies. “By and large, people are familiar with what’s in the sea,” said Wade. “I’m still generally being surprised by things that I find in fresh water. There’s a real sense of exploration, that I’m discovering things which aren’t generally known. I’m seeing creatures that people very rarely see in the flesh or even see pictures of.” Over the course of the last six seasons, those titular river monsters have included 150-pound arapaima caught in Brazil, a payara aptly known as a vampire fish, and a goliath tigerfish caught in the Congo. “The goliath tigerfish that he found in the Congo is the most incredible thing I have ever seen,” said Lucas. “That thing had three-inch teeth! People expect to see that in the ocean, like sharks, but not something swimming around in fresh water.”
While the show sails onward, with season eight in the works just as season seven gets ready to hit the airwaves, there is one major problem facing its makers: there aren’t that many river monsters in the world. “Lakes and rivers are something like .01% of all the world’s water,” said Wade. “Those large, fierce, charismatic fish in fresh water … It’s a finite list. It’s not a very big list.”
The show is keenly aware of the situation. “We started to get to the point a couple of years ago where we were thinking we’ve done it all,” said Wade. “We’ve covered a few small fish that can be a bit dangerous, the candiru catfish in the Amazon being one, but what’s happened in the last couple years is that we tend to find just enough to keep us going for another season. Although how long that will last for, I don’t know.”
Another challenge facing the show is that globally, due to climate change and environmental degradation, fish sizes are declining, which makes catching a river monster that much harder. “Big fish get the attention of viewers, but because of the way that the food pyramid works, those fish are not very numerous,” said Wade. “There has been a marked decline in fish sizes over the last few years. I’ve witnessed that myself and talking to people. The idea of catch-and-release is a bit bizarre, catching a fish just to put it back, but that’s the only way that freshwater fish stand a chance, worldwide.” As his producer said, while many watching the show would worry about electric eels or goliath tiger fish, Wade’s “fear is living in a world where there are no river monsters”.
Because of the problem of limited material, the show has been forced to think a little more laterally. “We’ve revisited species and done them from a slightly different angle. We’ve looked at a couple of creatures that are river monsters, but aren’t fish, like the anaconda from last season,” said Wade. “The program is evolving because of this problem.”
Due to the shortage of freshwater apex predators, as the show moves into its seventh season and beyond, its makers are making some concessions while trying to stay true to the heart of the show. This season, Wade will don scuba gear and head underwater to interact with fish on their home turf. Then, as part of Animal Planet’s fourth annual Monster Week, River Monsters is heading into the past, thanks to some CGI special effects, “to uncover the greatest river monster that ever lived”, according to the press release. The moment a documentary series starts dabbling in CGI, the question becomes: how do you make a show about fishing avoid jumping the shark?
“I feel like I’m the guardian of the show’s mission,” said Lucas. “I talk about the show’s DNA, and when you start straying too far from that, that’s when you’ve jumped the shark.”
For the prehistoric episode, Lucas found herself drawing a line in the CGI sand in order to stay true to the show’s core. “As soon as you throw a CGI hook in the water and some big CGI something comes to bite that hook, then you’ve jumped the shark and Jeremy has become a cartoon character,” said Lucas. “As entertaining as that might sound, we weren’t going to go there. CGI is great. But River Monsters doesn’t need it. It’s true and it’s real and we don’t have to try too hard.”
However, Lucas and Wade both agree that the show is changing. While the phrase “natural progression” came up several times in conversation about where the show might go next, neither of them seemed particularly worried about its future. “If we keep our eye on the ball and focusing on what resonated with Jeremy and River Monsters in the first place, and take that natural progression with Jeremy, I think we’ll be in fine shape,” said Lucas. “Viewers are going to help tell us that. We’ve been incredible lucky for going on seven seasons.”
Even if the show does end after eight seasons – and there is no sign that it will – it will have been a clear success for Animal Planet, and also for Wade. “We’ve achieved what we set out to do,” said Wade. “We’ve done it beyond our wildest expectations.”
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