TV Review : Geographic Lens Not Focused on Bridges

Mamas, don’t let your sons and daughters grow up to be National Geographic photographers.

Unless you want them to travel to malaria-infested jungles, get bitten by insects, be surrounded by deadly manta rays, risk dying in plane crashes--and about a dozen other sobering hazards described in the new “National Geographic Explorer” episode, “The Photographers.”

At the same time, such skilled, gutsy lensers as William Albert Allard, Beverly Joubert, David Doubilet, Nick Nichols and Jody Cobb insist that they have the best job in the world: photographer as world traveler. Their work remains the reason to thumb through a National Geographic issue and mentally cross time zones.

The ostensible reason why “The Photographers” is airing now is because of “The Bridges of Madison County” and its fictional National Geographic photographer, Robert Kincaid, played by Clint Eastwood in the film, who definitely knows how to mix business with pleasure. But, at least in the version available for review, a promised story about the Kincaid connection never appears.

Besides, the current breed of photographers appears to be more all-business than the Kincaid character, while considering themselves artists in a way Kincaid would dismiss. Doubilet, for example, estimates that he averages annually 100 days in the water shooting undersea life forms, and speaks almost reverentially of the chance moments that lead to great pictures. And Nichols, while being seemingly eaten alive in the Central African rain forest by bugs and worms, manages to turn images of tiny frogs into works fit for a gallery.

The show itself is considerably less artful and gives off the distasteful whiff of an hourlong ad for the magazine. We spend only moments with these brave globe-trotters when we want to share intimately in their work. These photographers are allowed to spend time with their subjects, but “The Photographers” often just feels like a rush job.

* “The Photographers” airs at 6 p.m. Sunday and at 9:30 p.m. Monday on TBS cable.