Have you ever been in a situation on location where no matter what you did you just couldn't get the footage that you were looking for? We went out to see these sperm whales off Norway. We were up in the Arctic Circle and we had some long distance sightings and Jack was getting seasick. It was freezing cold weather and 60-knot winds and no whales when there were supposed to be whales.

We wound up doing some things on the people who lived in the town and how they get along with 24 hours of daylight or three months of darkness. Somehow the stories come together. We find ways to present a story of where we are and of how harsh the life might be or the culture of the native people. Weather is something that you have to deal with a lot. That's probably the biggest problem that we encounter. Sometimes when that happens you just come up with some new ideas or you try to just not freak out and panic. You just have to have a different way to look at things. Take advantage of what you have.

So the back up plan if you can't get the animals for the show is to rely a little more heavily on the adventure aspects such as the people in the area or the location of the show and play that up a bit?

Lots of times, when things don't happen immediately, you do have the culture. We do have the people and just the landscape in itself. But what really makes it work for us, whether we have animals or we don't have animals is Jack. He's a very funny guy and sometimes our best material is from ad-libs or situations you could put Jack in that really make for entertaining television until the animals do show up.

And when they do we call that Jack's Luck and it happens all the time. We find ourselves in a situation where there are no animals and it seems that all is lost. And as producer, I'm trying to keep people pumped up - "don't worry - it'll happen" and usually it does. Jack's Luck. On a rainy day, the sun comes out and illuminates the animals that we haven't been able to see. It brings them out. It's just amazing. It's not really something that you can count on but with Jack, you've always got something. We never leave empty handed.