The grade-schoolers for whom Discovery Kids’ “Bindi the Jungle Girl” is designed should find this new series a breezy, affectionate, info- packed introduction to the world’s animals, vivaciously led by someone their size.
Their parents and other adults may find the show hosted by 8-year-old Bindi Irwin a little bit creepy.
That’s because her dead dad, Steve, is everywhere. He’s shown and mentioned in the present tense, even popping up in the show’s studio “treehouse” with Bindi and mom Terri, as though he’s well among the living.
While this shouldn’t matter to 6-year-olds – who may not even be aware that the beloved Crocodile Hunter died last Sept. 4 off the coast of Queensland in a freak encounter with a stingray – it can be a serious jolt for those of us who wiled away tube-years with the zesty Aussie zoo- master known world over for his delighted cries of “Crikey!” The shock and mourning are still too fresh.
Even though we’ve been told Irwin had already shot footage for Bindi’s new show, that doesn’t make its presentation any easier to watch, even as a tribute to the way Irwin’s work will outlive him.
It was eerie enough in Saturday’s premiere, when Bindi bubblingly prattles in the present tense about “my dad” while showing off her “jungle treehouse,” where she supposedly lives surrounded by wombats, iguanas and other creatures. It’s unsettling when she sets up previous clips of “my dad” visiting zoos in Hong Kong or the seas off South Africa as though Steve hopped over by plane just last week.
But it was downright – well, I don’t know what, but not comfortable – when Steve popped into the treehouse in Saturday’s second episode. He crouched behind a desk resting his chin on its edge, his head alongside that of a gorilla skull, which Bindi asks us to tell apart.
Sorry. That’s more than I can handle.
By the time Steve and wife/ widow, Terri, helped Bindi bid the audience bye-bye at the end of my hour screening disc, I was seriously weirded out.
But I’m not the intended viewership for “Bindi the Jungle Girl,” which airs, after all, on Discovery Kids (Saturdays, 3 and 3:30 p.m., Comcast digital channel 121) after Saturday’s one-time simulcast with Animal Planet. Do kids know or care about daddy Irwin’s tragic demise just nine months ago? Will it matter a year from now, or two years, or five, when “Bindi” repeats are still delighting children with their worldwide critter adventures and passionate support of wildlife conservation?
“Manatees! I love ’em!” shouts Bindi to introduce location footage, with animal names and location maps added on-screen. She’s certainly Steve Irwin’s kid, sounding like him, effervescing like him, even looking like him. (There’s also a bizarre baby- Charo resemblance thanks to those crimped pigtails.)
“On this adventure, we’re gonna take you to the brink of extinction!” she enthuses, perhaps a bit too eagerly, but like Steve, she’s always “on.”
Where he’ll rave, “Have a go at that! Is that glorious or what?!” she’ll chirp, “That’s my dad for you,” or cheer, “We can make a difference if we just try.”
Perhaps these early episodes lean a bit heavier on dad’s familiarity than future outings will. Mom Terri and “my dad’s best friend,” Australia zoo director Wes Mannion, are positioned as frequent treehouse visitors.
