‘Garden’ Reduced to Sitcom Fodder

Some of the most extraordinary nature cinematography you’ve ever seen and Leslie Nielsen’s signature “Naked Gun”-style sardonic humor might seem a perfect match for Sunday’s “National Geographic Explorer” installment, “Savage Garden,” on TBS.

The concept worked in “Sea Nasties,” Nielsen’s first comic hosting job for the nature series, because the chuckles didn’t undermine reality. Here, however, in an afternoon program that features intense close-ups of everyday carnage among insect and animal garden-dwellers, the one-liners, mood music, squishy sound effects and cutesy sight gags reduce nature’s life-and-death struggles to sitcom fodder.

Some jokes hit. Most don’t. The backyard is a “battlefield” full of “serial killers, aerial combat and death,” where “amputation” and “slaughter” take place. A jumping spider sneaks up on a bee awaiting death “like a slasher victim.” “Poor bee, she had a good 80 miles [of flight] left on her,” Nielsen jokes when the struggle’s over.

When a male black widow spider approaches a female, Nielsen’s voice-over is “Please, baby, please, baby, please--don’t kill me.”

In a prolonged sequence in which fire ants overwhelm a dragonfly, the ants are compared to “paparazzi” and the scene ends with the victim’s decapitation. “Tails I win, heads you lose,” is the comment.

It’s all a bit much, as if pandering to kids’ penchant for “gross” stuff were the main directive.

Which is too bad, because despite shots that linger almost sadistically on death struggles, the cinematic techniques of George and Kathy Dodge are stunning. They get you closer to tiny creatures than you imagine possible--close enough to appreciate the eerie beauty of a daddy longlegs, to watch a jumping spider’s retinas flash and to see a tiny tiger beetle’s reflection in a drop of water on a rose petal.

* “Savage Garden” airs Sunday at 4 p.m. on TBS. The network has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).