There’s just no getting around it. When you first read the concept for ITV’s Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters, it sounds like an idea dredged from the depths of Alan Partridge’s dictaphone, something to be filed away alongside Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank rather than commissioned by a legitimate real-life broadcaster. It’s the final boss of the “celebrities plus unpleasant task plus farflung location” reality TV formula that we’ve seen play out on our screens so many times. The apex predator, if you will.
In it, a group of seven British stars – including Lenny Henry, Amandaland’s Lucy Punch and Call the Midwife stalwart Helen George – are dispatched to the Bahamas, embarking on a trip to one of the most beautiful places in the world that’s tempered with perhaps the ultimate caveat. While they’re staying on the island of Bimini, they must swim with sharks and eventually learn to love (or, at least, express some mild affection towards) “one of the most feared and persecuted animals on the planet”, as the opening voiceover puts it.
Helping them out with this alarming task are three “world-renowned shark experts”. There’s shark biologist Dr Tristan Guttridge, marine scientist Danni Washington and army veteran Paul de Gelder, a man who survived a bull shark attack that left him, in his words, “half cyborg” (he uses a prosthetic arm and leg).
Since then, de Gelder has made the astounding decision to dedicate the rest of his life to shark conservation. His jaw-dropping story, and apparent total lack of resentment for the species that has irrevocably changed his life, immediately impresses (and, presumably, terrifies) the celebrities. “He’s like a Jedi,” muses Dougie Poynter from McFly.
The toothy subject matter gives resident comedians Henry and Ross Noble plenty of easy material to work with. “If I find out this show is called Britain’s Tastiest Celebrity, I will not be happy,” Noble quips upon arrival.
There’s very little time for niceties before the celebs are chucked in at the deep end. Moments after meeting the experts, they’re informed that they’re about to be immersed underwater in a metal cage to observe bull sharks (yes, the same type responsible for de Gelder’s injuries) up close.
It’s safe to say that none of them look particularly thrilled at this development, despite having signed up for exactly this; most admit they expected a bit more preamble before being, well, thrown to the sharks. It’s particularly tough for George, who is scared of the sea but wants to face her fear so that she can swim with her two young children.
“This is the realest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve done panto in Lewisham,” Henry jokes as he watches the predators circle and snap. Perhaps this is the ultimate test of a comedy pro: being able to come up with one-liners while immersed underwater and experiencing mild peril. Meanwhile, Paralympian and presenter Ade Adepitan, who is paraplegic, has to navigate entering the cage without the use of his legs. “It’s all core and arms and shoulders… But there’s also sharks,” he says.
At first, it’s all a bit repetitive, a bit reality by numbers. The voiceover can be grandiose and self-serious (are sharks really “public enemy number one”? Don’t we all have other, more pressing things to worry about?), and the stars keep declaring that they’re going to fire their agent as some form of perturbing aquatic creature brushes up against them. Indeed, you are left wondering exactly why they’ve signed up. A fear of sharks is not the sort of phobia that tends to hold you back in everyday life, unlike, say, an extreme dislike of heights or an aversion to flying.
Typically, shows like this are either a jolly in disguise, or are based around learning something that might one day prove vaguely useful. But surely all seven of the participants (they’re not really contestants, because, as the experts point out, “this is not another one of those shows where celebrities get voted off”) could have quite easily gone all their lives without confronting this particular terror. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just do Strictly or even I’m a Celebrity?
But as the opening episode progresses, it all gets unexpectedly moving. You start to feel strangely proud of George when she manages a few minutes in the underwater cage, having only a few hours earlier held her head under water for the first time in years. You shrug off the inherent ridiculousness of watching a bunch of people you vaguely recognisable from the telly squeal when they realise they’re in close proximity to a barracuda, or hearing the narrator say that a shark has decided to have an “exploratory bite” of Noble. And you start rooting for them in this silly but somehow uplifting quest to challenge themselves – and do some good PR for a much-maligned creature in the process.
