Friends, I have a confession: I have finally obtained a guilty pleasure. And that guilty pleasure is a TV show about fishing.

The entire premise of this show is that this man travels the world trying to catch really big and/or dangerous fish. There's usually some kind of legend and/or bloody mauling attached to it, so off Mr Jeremy Wade goes to try to catch it. The show is incredibly predictable - you know exactly when the false starts will be, the twist of new information, the final big showdown. It's all accompanied by Wade's laconic narration. This is a man who does not show excitement unless he's yelling "fish on! FISH ON!" when something takes his bait. Occasionally he'll do something like go swimming with some hungry piranha or stab his own thumb with a fishhook, but in the best tradition of laconic men, he'll remove the fishhook and then use his own blood as extra bait. There's an amusing tension between the format of the show - BLOODTHIRSTY KILLINGS! EXCITEMENT! CONSTANT DANGER! - and what fishing actually is, which is sitting somewhere for hours, usually very quietly, waiting for something to take your bait.

Obviously my love of weird water creatures is strong (I was fascinated by this book as a little kid) and I'm especially fascinated by the ones with bad reputations. I really, really like sharks, have been unsettlingly close to wild alligators and have a massive soft spot for stingrays. Most of these animals are horribly persecuted by humans out of revenge, fear, malice or because we did something stupid and got in the way or provoked them. They're being animals and we get in their way, and while they have teeth and stings, we have so many worse ways of systematically killing them. There's a threat here, but it's not them.

Wade is a biologist by training and a catch and release fisherman. After catching them, he (rather tenderly) holds the fish in the water and gently moves it to get water flowing over its gills to help it recover - tired fish just sink to the bottom and die. He only releases the fish once it starts moving independently. Sometimes you get genuinely interesting insights, like piranha changing their behaviour in response to invasive species. He respects the fish and the river and the ecosystem, and argues that healthy rivers should have monsters - it shows they are capable of supporting (usually) apex predators, that the ecosystem is healthy enough to support plants and bugs and little fish and bigger fish and mammals and finally the biggest fish that eat them. A river with monsters is vibrantly, gloriously alive.

However, what this show manages to do really well is interactions between Wade and the locals. It's kind of sad that a fishing programme does this better than many serious documentaries, but there's a genuine respect and willingness to listen and learn. Crucially, when people don't want to talk he backs off, and the cameras don't always accompany him when he goes to talk to someone.
He ends up talking to people and going fishing with them and hearing their stories and asking them to help him out. This isn't done in an obnoxious way that exoticises them - "see these tribesmen hunting in their ancient tribal custom". Wade's basic approach is "I'm a fisherman who doesn't know this river, you're a fisherman who does know this river, you're the expert here" and it means that he actually engages with people rather than patronises them. It's not perfect but it's a good sight better at being respectful than most TV.

This isn't intellectually taxing TV. You aren't going to be left reeling (ahaha) with new information. But as an entertaining programme with fascinating creatures, interesting stories and often intriguing environments it has a surprising amount to recommend it.