Wild Bill Has A Compelling Idea For His Own Deadliest Catch Spin-Off
Considering the immense and long-lasting success of Discovery's documentary series "Deadliest Catch" (a show focused on crab fishing in the Bering Sea, which derives its title from the extremely high mortality rate of commercial fishermen) it's no wonder that Discovery has attempted to cash in on the series' popularity through several "Deadliest Catch" spinoff series.
These include 2016's "Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove," which focused on crab fishing off the coast of Oregon, and "Deadliest Catch Bloodlines" — a show which explores the legacy left behind by the late Captain Phil Harris, and one which some longtime fans absolutely can't stand. Although the highly popular crab-fishing reality series has only spawned two true spinoff series thus far, it's clear that there are still plenty more locations and concepts that might be explored throughout the "Deadliest Catch" franchise.
Indeed, Captain "Wild" Bill Wichrowski, who has been a mainstay of the series since Season 6 , has already expressed his own ideas concerning a possible "Deadliest Catch" spinoff — and his pitch is actually quite compelling.
Wild Bill wants to take celebrities sportfishing across the world
During a 2021 interview with Comicbook.com, Captain "Wild" Bill Wichrowski explained his idea for a "Deadliest Catch" spinoff series that would follow him and a celebrity guest star as they explored popular sportfishing spots around the world. "For the longest time, I wanted to do, I don't know if you remember 'The American Sportsman' when you had Curt Gowdy and he would sit in the front of a Range Rover and would be wrestling the boa and make all the comments," Wild Bill said. "But I always thought something like that, where you take an athlete or an actor sportfishing around the world, would be a great show, but it's been done a lot."
"The American Sportsman," as described by Wild Bill, was a series that ran on ABC from 1965 to 1985, which saw Curt Grady and his various celebrity guests going across the world and engaging in various outdoor activities like hang gliding, rock climbing, hunting, and fishing. Wild Bill also explained that he first got the idea for this spinoff when he retired from fishing several years back, and traveled to Mexico and Costa Rica to run sportfishing boats — a profession he found compelling enough to possibly warrant its own series.
Indeed, Wild Bill's pitch is certainly very intriguing: particularly because of the immense scale of such a series, and the lack of celebrity involvement in "Deadliest Catch" itself. Wild Bill's idea for a "Deadliest Catch" spinoff provides an inventive and engaging twist on the program's long-running formula, and is certainly worth some consideration for the sheer entertainment factor of seeing celebrities tackling the incredibly difficult world of sportfishing.