Fair and Honest Review

northwoods1992

Although I agree with the points of many others regarding the errant direction of History (previously the History Channel), that is not the point of this review - rather to honestly and fairly review The Curse of Oak Island.

I shall start off with the negative aspects of COOI: the show is slow and has obvious pacing issues as many others have said here. We as the audience are naturally impatient and are more interested in the results of the digs, the investigations, etc rather than watching the process unfold. This has led many times to a series of events that rightfully should have taken one episode being stretched out to three or four.

Personally I find the narration to be a bit degrading as well. It feels as if the narrator is attempting to catch us up on what's happening after every small occurrence. For example the main characters might be investigating some pirate treasure theory, and the narrator feels the compulsion to butt in with "Pirate treasure?! Could it be?" Contrived is the word I would use.

As an additional observation, something always seems to go wrong with the investigations - hence the idea of the Curse of Oak Island, but there are times when it becomes obvious that the difficulties are self-inflicted - for example, "Well, it's getting late, we'll have to continue the dig tomorrow," they say in broad daylight - to which we all respond, "great, we'll have to wait until next episode. Again." Still with all of that being said, overall I have enjoyed the show. It is a bit overlong at times, but the processes they take are logical and they are very conscientious of local laws and very respectful of other owners of the islands' wishes. As much as the theories seem to be far-fetched at times, I find them to be refreshing takes on the holes in between the stories of the history books. To be honest, this show contains more history than a number of History shows, even if they are just theories.

All in all, I think it's not a bad watch. I really hope they're able to discover something - hopefully in a more timely manner.

score 6/10

northwoods1992 20 January 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3398992/