Life After Chernobyl Documentary / River Monsters Recap

So tonight was the big Chernobyl night on Animal Planet if you weren’t aware… if you are aware, then I’m sure you’re just as disappointed as me.

Animal Planet had two shows on… One was River Monsters: 30 Years After Chernobyl and the other was a documentary called Life After: Chernobyl. Both shows were grave disappointments.

River Monsters: 30 Years After Chernobyl

So this special episode of River Monsters came on before the premier of Life After: Chernobyl… it was made to appear like it was a new episode that’s actually related to the documentary that followed it. Well… it wasn’t.

An image of an animal apparently born with serious birth defect in the Chernobyl exclusion zone… from the River Monsters episode Atomic Assassin.

An image of an animal apparently born with serious birth defect in the Chernobyl exclusion zone… from the River Monsters episode Atomic Assassin.

An image of an animal apparently born with serious birth defect in the Chernobyl exclusion zone… from the River Monsters episode Atomic Assassin.

It turns out this special episode of River Monsters was really just an old River Monsters episode (Atomic Assassin) with literally an extra minute of Jeremy Wade talking in the beginning. There was no new footage or anything. It was literally just the River Monsters episode Atomic Assassin played over again.

Jeremy Wade: Is it fair to say things are getting back to normal?
Bird Scientist Fellow: Uh no. Things are actually continuing to get worse here. We’re seeing.. Uh.. many fewer species in many fewer numbers and we know this is because the birds are not living as long, insects are dying, and the males are frequently sterile. His probability (the birds) of surviving from now until next year I’d less than half of what it’d be in a clean area.

Honestly, that was super disappointing.

You would’ve thought that at the least Animal Planet would add some unaired footage they took at Chernobyl to the episode… but no… *sigh*

Life After: Chernobyl

Life After Chernobyl TV Description
The first scientists with unlimited access to the Chernobyl danger zone explore the impact on the environment and wildlife since being in the most contaminated area on earth for the last 30 years.

Life After: Chernobyl had to be one of the most worthless documentaries I’ve seen all year. They did absolutely nothing in the show… absolutely nothing. Two ‘scientists’, an anthropologist by the name of Mary Anne and a biologist by the name of Rob Nelson, went around the Chernobyl exclusion zone and basically spent 5 minutes or so with real scientist doing long-term studies inside the zone.

While visiting with these scientists, our TV ‘scientists repeatedly made sensational claims and skewed what the scientists were saying… specifically to make sound bites for commercials I think… (“radioactive wolves” anybody???)

Now because their on-screen time with these scientists is so brief, you basically learn nothing about any of the animals living in the zone. There is absolutely nothing new for the viewer to get out of this documentary… I mean really, you could literally watch the PBS documentary on the Chernobyl exclusion zone and read some of the recent articles published on it and you’d know a million times more stuff than this documentary can offer.

Life After: Chernobyl really seems to me to be a low-budget trash ‘documentary’ made exclusively to trick viewers into watching so they can get more advertising dollars because it’s a ‘special’. Animal Planet also seemed to specifically play up the radiation risk in an apparent attempt to make the show more action packed (a gas mask drill, are you kidding???).