BBC America renews 'Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan' for second season

One of my all-time favorite shows!  I remember Dominic from The Lord of the Rings, of course, but also as the kid who went to work for British detective Hetty Wainthrop, a great PBS Mystery series before The Lord of the Rings.  

Here, Dominic proves he is much more than a good actor--he has the knowledge base of a PhD in biology, the hands-on experience with animals in front of the camera of a Jack Hanna, and the trekking expertise of an experienced survivalist.  He takes off down a jungle path in the middle of the night, stopping only to show us a venomous snake or beautiful but poison frog.  Or a creepy poisonous spider (he keeps Black Widows as pets, he says)...a weird ant colony in rolled-up leaves or a spider that just looks so much like the ants that it fools even the ants (his favorites).   His love for each of these critters is so apparant--he grabs his snake stick as he leaps from his car cruising a foreign highway in Africa, South America, Australia, or maybe just the Southwest U.S. just to show us another animal he cannot resist picking up and lovingly displaying its every idiosyncrisy for those of us back home munching popcorn on our couches.  My favorite was the little dragon lizard who kept puffing up its "mane" (I am clearly not a biologist) to look as large and fearsome as possible. 

Dominic shows us animals we'd never see, ones we might never believe exist without his show (those colorful South American tree frogs and the red and black bug in tonight's show from Thailand are examples), as well as the common creepy crawlies like spiders.  He shows us a sweet side to even dangerous animals, explaining why they can be dangerous or are a bit strange.  And he mentions how they are threatened by humanity, deforestation, illegal trade, etc.  So much info in an easy-going show with humor (did Frank buy him some new jeans without the hole in the butt?), excitement (swimming with crocodiles...expert handling a wild black widow spider or a myriad of venomous snakes from rattlers to cobras to rarer vipers...), and a touching love for these animals that can only come from a lifetime of treasuring contact with them, respecting their lives and diversity and learning everything he could about them.