The Watchman: ‘River Monsters,’ Cute Puppies, 'Fargo's Awesome Bridge

It’s the final season for Jeremy Wade and River Monsters on Animal Planet, and host Wade is OK with bringing the show, which sees him search for exotic, and often quite fearsome, fish around the world, to an end. “We had a list of fish in our heads, and we ticked off everything on the list,” he told B&C. “That’s it!”

The new season offers an array of quirks, including Wade boarding a rickety submersible in Honduras and descending 2,000 feet in the thing. Add in the hours of sitting on the ocean floor, and it was a trying excursion. “People ask about my scariest moments,”

Wade said. “That was eight hours of low-level terror.” Wade goes all the way back to season one, episode one for his favorite River Monsters. That episode was set in India, where Wade corralled his quarry: a 161 pound Goonch Catfish. “It looks suitably hideous,” he said. “It’s the face that launched 60 episodes.”

Also giving thought to its premiere are the folks behind Puppy Dog Pals, a new Disney Junior series about a pair of offbeat pugs, Bingo and Rolly. The thinking behind the show is that the humans head out of the house and suspect the dogs will nap, play, nap, eat, drink and settle in for a nap. But what if the dogs have a different idea about how to spend the day?

Like, if their owner—in this case, Bingo and Rolly’s owner, Bob—had thought about just how nice it would be to run his toes through some Hawaii sand. So Bingo and Rolly head to Hawaii and make it happen.

“They tend to go on some wild adventures,” said Sean Coyle, executive producer.

No one is really thinking about running their toes through the sand in Fargo, but star Ewan McGregor was nonetheless talking up the place, and the show, as the new season starts on FX. He gives creator Noah Hawley credit for making a boring card game positively pop on screen. “It’s the first time in history that bridge has ever looked so sexy,” said McGregor. “That’s for sure.”

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.