Like so many other American police-video shows, "World's Wildest Police Videos" features (supposedly real) footage that is often deeply affecting and upsetting and, yes, sometimes amusing (stupid drunks CAN be funny), and for that, the producers can be lauded for perhaps doing a service to viewers by showing the affects of drinking, drugs, mental instability and all-around poor judgment. (And, like "Cops" before it, officers are sometimes shown in less-than-flattering light, usually due to their own inflated sense of importance and the presence of the cameras.) Unfortunately, any good is virtually overwhelmed by its host, former sheriff John Bunnell, and officer CW Jensen; Bunnell, with his lantern jaw and blinding white teeth, offers up commentary with prose so purple you can hardly believe it - no cliché is spared, and none of this is helped by his incongruously high-pitched, rather queen-y and nasal speaking voice and smug, "I told you so" intonations; Jensen, on the other hand, is supposed to be the 'voice of reason': calm, measured, soothing. However, it also appears this 'voice of reason' is unable to appear on camera without a treasure trove of make-up. Both Bunnell and Jensen INSIST on telling the audience EXACTLY what is going on on-screen, which often inspires the viewer to reply, "No sh*t, Sherlock." I've seen British takes on this type of programming and they featured tasteful commentary, used judiciously, opting to let the footage speak for itself. Not here! Displaying our usual American bombast, Bunnell and company AT NO TIME allow us to have a moment to decide for ourselves how to feel or think, for they offer words of the knee-jerk, lowest-common-denominator variety. Even worse than its hosts are the insipid, INSTANTLY ANNOYING and NON-STOP SQUEALING SIRENS THROUGHOUT EVERY SEGMENT, even when it's all-too-obvious that there is NO WAY the sound of sirens could possibly be heard by the cameras, particularly in the myriad news and police helicopter footage (by the way, both news and police helicopters the world over have THE EXACT SAME commentator, as the voice heard belongs to one man and one man only) , giving not-so-subtle credence to the feeling that much of what you're watching is, if not entirely fabricated, undeniably doctored. Still, its popularity, even several years after finishing production, says plenty, so it must have done something right. A time-waster but little more.
