Showcasing The Bugs In Your Home!

Usually on The Nature Of Things TV fans get to visit tropical rain forests or the frozen Canadian North or laboratories in Oxford University.
But director Roberto Verdecchia had this great idea -- he wanted nothing better than to visit an average Toronto home and report from there.
You can see for yourself on the absolutely original hour The Great Wild Outdoors which premieres on CBC-TV Thursday February 9 at 8 p.m.
Verdecchia's method is simplicity itself --he selected the home of friends and bade them leave while he brought in a team of eager entomologists to track down every insect living uninvited in this home.
"I think we got almost everything we wanted," says Verdecchia. "We simply wanted to show how every house is a fully functioning habitat for a wide variety of insects."
At first we see the TV team bidding the Vettese family goodbye as the home becomes the personal insect fiefdom of talented researcher Michalle Trautwein and her easger beaver crew of insect detectives.
It's "Lights!Action!Camera!" and the stars of this production seem to be everywhere --under rugs, lurking in the darkest recesses of the cellar, even in the clothes closets.
I asked Roberto on the phone what would have happened if none of his guest stars had shown up and he laughed.
Because this hour was shot in the summer and many of the critters simply enter via open doors and windows.
"In deepest winter it might be a bit different but they are still there," he says.
Of course the young children in the family seem not at all enjoyed to be sharing such a nice house with bugs.
But generally speaking the bugs don't bother us much and we're expected to do the same thing I guess.
The press release quotes Roberto as saying :"I'm not much of a bug guy." But he effortlessly captures the enthusiasm of the researchers upon each discovery.
So here we have it --a wild life adventure documentary that resolutely never goes outdoors. How strange is that?
Every home it turns out teems with life and the question here is relevant: who is living with whom? What we have here is a great, unchartered frontier.
Every discovery becomes a joyful moment and specimens are bagged to be sent to the laboratory.We get to know a little about the researchers who seem impossibly young.
There are carpet beetles, clothes moths, the delightful wood louse, all those spiders in the basement.
I know there are spiders because of the mummified remains of their prey. Others such as mites are so tiny they look like dust spots--that's a deliberate cover up.
I could go on: pantry beetles, the ever unpopular stink bug, the house seems chock full of all these critters. The silverfish have been around since the Stone Age. There's one specie who can drop a leg just to fool a predator. And the moth in the luggage -- I was waiting for him.
This reminds me of a past NOT documentary which looked at all the bugs in a normal back yard.
Two names deserve mention: director of photography Derek Rogers and bug wrangler Jim Lovisek.
The Great Wild Indoors was produced by 52 Media Inc.
THE GREAT WILD INDOORS PREMIERES ON CBC-TV'S THE NATURE OF THINGS THURSDAY FEBRUARY 9 AT 8 P.M., REPEATED ON NEWS NETWORK FEB. 11 AT 7 P.M. AND FEB. 12 AT 4 A.M. and 8 P.M.
STARTING FEB.9 THERE ARE REPEATS ON http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/the-great-wild-indoors.
MY RATING: ***1/2.