Discovery Channel

Discovery’s A Cut Above is a chainsaw carving competition that’s very similar to Netflix’s Blown Away, but perhaps even better, since we can see more of of the process. Highly recommended.

Individual Shark Week specials and documentaries have received a lot of criticism over the years, including from shark scientists. But just what did shark researchers find when they looked at 30+ years of Shark Week shows? The answers may surprise you.

Over its 33 years, Discovery Channel’s Shark Week has had some highs and lows, celebrating and educating us about sharks, but also presenting fiction as fact, lying to scientists and misrepresenting what they say, and making sharks seem scarier than they are. Here’s a look at Shark Week’s history, and why it’s so disappointing.

Discovery Channel’s Who Wants To Be An Astronaut is just the latest in a long line of shows that started with Survivor creator Mark Burnett’s Destination: Mir—which ended when Mir burned up in the atmosphere, which is also what happened to all the other space reality TV shows.

Discovery Channel’s Dodgeball Thunderdome was filmed this summer, putting people’s lives at risk to produce one of the worst reality competitions I’ve ever seen.

“To say that there aren’t women in shark science is utterly ridiculous,” a Black female marine biologist told me. So I asked both Discovery’s Shark Week and National Geographic’s Sharkfest why they focused on white male shark scientists in their marketing and casting.

Last year, Jesse James said a deal to bring back Monster Garage fell through because Discovery management was “pushing very hard to change Monster Garage into a Crappy/Cheap reality show.”