Great series, but needlessly staged, over dramatized and much too repetitive.
Why create such an atmosphere of danger and stress? We know there is a whole camera crew there at all times. We see Tom and his friends go duck hunting, a duck is shot and the camera shows the dead duck. With a camera crew next to the bird, the hunters can't find it? Embarrassing.
A grizzly is lurking at night in the yard, Tom fires a shot then goes on his own, armed with a torch to investigate. Come on, we have archive footage of a bear, then a probably armed crew goes filming in the yard.
The voice over keeps reminding us that Marty is all on his own, no mention of the cameramen, sound technicians etc. When he breaks down at night "10 miles away from his cabin", are we really to believe that a heartless, sadistic crew would film him unarmed, walking to exhaustion for hours, gasping for water, with bears and wolves marauding? Same when using the plane - will he / won't he make it, shouldn't fly in this weather etc, with his plane being filmed from another aircraft. The loss of his glasses (series 1 -06) to add tension to him being on a very tight schedule ("with no one around for hundreds of miles") was a silly staged situation; search for a couple of minutes, then "oh there they are", camera zooms and miracle! his brown frame, brown oval rimmed spectacles have become white frame white square rim "broken" spectacles!
Eustace owes a fair bit of money and claims he is broke. Is he really staring in two TV series pro bono? The chase for the alleged poacher was not credible. Two mountain men moving silently, but accompanied by a full camera crew stomping in the woods. Any poacher would have heard them from miles away.
The persistent over dramatization is embarrassing. Will he make in time / will he crash / will the bears or the wolves attack / is he lost in the snow etc etc
Why are we shown the same clips half a dozen times during an episode, going back and forth in time? As for the archive footage of hungry bears and wolves (wolves can weight up to 140 pounds we are told zillions of times), perhaps it made cheap padding, but very boring by the end of the series.
Very interesting series, but one gets the feeling that it's produced for an audience of primary school children.
