This was kind of fun – featuring the Churchill polar bear guiding trials and tribulations of PolarBearAlley’s Kelsey Eliasson, Dennis Compayre, Brian Ladoon, which premiered Tuesday 22 September in Canada and the US. Supposedly, you can watch online episodes that have aired already (wouldn’t work for me).

This is a ‘reality’ TV series, not a documentary. It won’t be to everyone’s taste. But by focusing on independent polar bear guides, you see the bears in their element (and the goings-on in the town) without the constant lectures about global warming and predictions that the bears are all going to die that are, I understand, a feature of Tundra Buggy tours operated by the largest outfit, Frontiers North, due to its partnership with Polar Bears International, a strongly activist organization that many polar bear biologists belong (including Steven Amstrup, Ian Stirling, Andrew Derocher, former WWF employee Geoff York).

So far, anyway – perhaps the lectures are to come? YouTube Trailer below.

UPDATED 29 September 2015: OLN has posted the first episode on Youtube, copied below.



Polar Bear Town Episode 1 – The Gauntlet [22 minutes]

Published on 26 Sep 2015: Dennis races to get a VIP client to polar bears before conservation scoops them up, while Kelsey wrestles to protect an overzealous photographer from an unpredictable cub with a very protective mother. Don’t miss Polar Bear Town, Tuesdays at 9pm ET/PT on OLN.

Trailer [Published on 1 Sep 2015]

“On the edge of Canada’s arctic, one remote northern town lies directly in the path of the the largest polar bear migration in the world. Polar Bear Town offers a front-row seat for some of the closest human-bear encounters ever seen on television. Watch Polar Bear Town, Tuesdays at 9 pm ET/PT on OLN.”

Here is the cast (see full bios here):