Beyond Oak Island

I know. This is on the HISTORY Channel and should be about history, but I was expecting the folks to spend more time in the present 'digging' up history. In the second episode, they spent almost 30 minutes talking about the exploits of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (and even the Dalton Gang), but less than 15 minutes of Gary Drayton being on location searching for anything. Seems like they need too much filler material in the episodes somewhat like they do with The Curse of Oak Island and fill it in with old material from previous seasons

THEIR business plan. Not YOURs. On paper this makes sense.What started as a simple search for treasure on Oak Island, supposed to last a season or two, has become a multi-year never-ending story. In the BUSINESS of syndicated TV, the only way to cash in on that is to spin-off something with the same actors, crew, producers etc. Big bucks. As long as the customers ... err ... viewers ... go for it ....?

Only seen the first episode, but it seems to be padded out even worse than the Curse of Oak Island. They are using the same contrived reactions where anything they need to emphasise shows the same reaction (sharp look sideways to whoever is nearby). This is boring now. The Oak Island series feels overstretched now and this feels like a step too far.

I actually, maybe foolishly, thought they'd be delving into the mysteries and trying to solve some stuff but nope. They just go over the history of each treasure-mystery, then for about maybe 10 minutes end up going to the site and look around and ponder, maybe do some metal-detecting, look at some rocks, find a rusty bullet-casing or carving and go "Oh! There must definitely be something to this mystery if we'd keep digging!" and then they leave.

Major disappointment. Major bore.

Someone please Gorilla Tape Matty Blake to the boat seat. And while you're at it, put an extra large piece of it across his mouth.

Matty makes these BOI episodes extremely uncomfortable to watch. He just comes off as a total sycophant. Hey guys. Can we go diving yet? Can we? Can we? Can we?

When they finally do, you can see the trepidation in the other crew members when the divers hit the water and Matty takes the comm and becomes the man in charge. It's like these divers have been on the bottom for 10 seconds and Matty is already hounding them. Everything all right down there? Find anything yet? How's it going?

Diving is serious business. If I had some jamoke hounding me on the comm line every 15 seconds, I'd be very tempted to surface and promptly toss him overboard. TV show or no TV show.

Nothing ruins a documentary faster than a producer that inserts himself into the documentation. Give the basics of the story and then get out of the way and let the experts take it from there.