My latest favorite TV show (Dark Matters, Twisted but True), which I am watching right now, might well be my favorite just because I haven’t gotten sick of it yet. It might also be my favorite because it’s on at a convenient time of night, after everybody else has gone to bed and I can watch something in English, uninterrupted. It might be my favorite because it’s on Discovery Science, and it makes me feel smart to watch it, even though zero intellectual energy is actually expended. It might be my favorite because of the content – strange and little known tales from the history of science; always cool stuff. But I think the real reason I like it is because of the format.
They intersperse experts talking about the case, in appropriately knowledgeable tones of voice, a narrator intoning the dramatic highlights in a smooth but spooky voice, a la Vincent Price, and re-enactments that are almost comically overacted. Not too serious, not too shallow.
They show a few different episodes per show, like they did on The Twilight Zone and Believe it or Not, which makes it good for people like me, who have eroded their attention span down to a 7 minute level from watching too much children’s TV. I now consider the Disney Channel adult, because it’s not Minimax, or Duck TV.
Right now I’m watching an episode about a bunch of Russian skiers who died mysteriously and nobody is sure if it was a Yeti, or if they were killed because they saw some kind of secret test. The case was never solved. Before that there was the case of the French scientist who discovered N-Rays in 1904, but he was totally delusional.
Last night it was the guy who designed a “bat bomb” to drop on the Japanese. Basically, it was about a million bats carrying little napalm capsules, but the program was scrapped because they burned down the base where they were testing and the A bomb was almost ready anyhow, but it was an interesting idea.
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