Wild host easygoing
Amateur naturalist, nature lover and a naturally inclined show-off, Dominic Monaghan has an easygoing, natural vibe. He makes an ideal host, tour guide and jungle explorer in the critter-cam program Wild Things, a BBC America wildlife series that opens its second season Tuesday with the former Lost actor in Kenya in search of the giant spitting cobra.
The critters that fire his passion are undeniably interesting, but Monaghan’s as comfortable vamping with street kids in a Mombasa market as he is trekking with a camera crew through Kenya’s vast Tsavo wilderness.
Confronting an Egyptian cobra, he notes that the snake can kill a person in 20 minutes — if it hits an artery. Monaghan notes, too, that most snakes tend to flee rather than fight. One has to be either really unlucky or really careless to get tagged by a cobra.
Wild Things is mad and wonderful. Monaghan’s enthusiasm, his natural-born curiosity and almost childlike sense of wonder are infectious. The result is really quite cool, a millennial’s look at some of the millennium’s last surviving wild animals. (OLN — 7 & 10 p.m.) ❚ In the season finale of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Det. Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) defies his bosses and continues his investigation of shady philanthropist Lucas Wint (guest star Ian Roberts), even if means being suspended. (Fox, City — 10:30 p.m.)