Kreaturen aus der Tiefe

As far as mocumentary goes this one is very compelling. It makes the audience think and ponder the possibility of a mermaid while still maintaining a healthy amount of fiction. It is far from perfect but highly entertaining.

Why has animal planet given away its status as an iconic factual and educational channel and prostituted itself in a way that is only known to itself, to bring a programme like mermaids into its fold? It was obvious from the outset that we were listening to actors in studio's rather than in lab surroundings. This transmission should have been televised on April 1st. How many times in the past have Animal Planet tried to dupe its viewers? Obviously we will have to view every other transmission with a critical or unbelieving eye from now on. The most upsetting part of this fiction is that we were missing better programming on other channels. Very let down!

I stumbled upon this when they re-ran it on the Discovery Channel. It looked fishy (no pun intended) from the beginning, but, since this was the Discovery Channel, I thought that it was a reenactment of actual statements. Wrong. It was very easy to tell that the "scientists" were actors. They were trying too hard to look "candid" and genuine. So that struck me right off the bat. Then we were treated to a "video" of a teenager stumbling across the body of an alleged mermaid. Again, very obvious that it's fake with blatant, poor CGI.

I have no problem with any of this. It's a free country and there are people who believe this stuff. However, I do have a problem with this kind of stuff being shown on the Discovery Channel. The Discovery Channel has (or had) a reputation of having legitimate scientific programing. They've had plenty of ACTUAL documentaries in similar style to this and to put this program on the channel, regardless of how many times they alluded to how it was fake, is completely inappropriate. I expect this kind of stuff on the SyFy Channel, where it would be appropriate, not on a channel like Discovery. I believe this program, more than any other in recent times, speaks to the poor state of U.S. television.

I can't understand why so many people were irked by this mermaid series. This is part two in the series and it's very interesting with good animation too. For the people who didn't like it because it was pseudo, guess what? Mermaids aren't real!

But I enjoyed this documentary so much, I don't even know why. I'm going to watch it again for sure.