Top Shot — unobtrusively interesting

Since I’ve just finished crapping all over a bunch of “one by one off the island” reality programs, I thought I’d briefly mention one that I’ve been liking a lot lately. It’s called Top Shot, hosted by Colby Donaldson — yes, THAT Colby Donaldson, who came so close to winning Survivor 2 by being the nicest guy in the history of Western civilization, more or less.
Top Shot is about marksmanship. They start with a double handful of people who have pre-existing qualifications at some kind of target-shooting thing, ranging from biathlon to Army snipers to more out-there stuff like archery, and get them to compete in situations where their expertise with a particular weapon isn’t all that relevant. The results are fun and interesting, Colby is nice to look at (and, man oh man, his voice is soooo sexy it would peel the underwear off, say, ME), charming, and a reasonably good host, and the artificial conflicts are held to a reasonable minimum. It’s not boring, but there are no teenage-girl adolescent cat-fights, to my relief.
I managed to catch nearly all of Season 1 in a single day — Season 2 is currently underway. If you like this sort of thing, you’ll like Top Shot. It’s on the History Channel, and I gather they justify this by doing a lot of “weapons from the past” competitions like flintlock rifles. One thing I enjoyed is that the quality of the photography is very, very high, which I suppose is necessary if you’re going to show, say, a tomahawk in slo-mo in flight. So, check it out.