Difference between revisions of "Mystery Hunters"

Revision as of 04:00, 18 November 2007

Mystery Hunters is an award-winning Discovery Kids documentary series on "the paranormal, the supernatural and, by extension, the inedible." Araya (Mengesha) and Christina (Broccolini), two real-life teenage mystery hunters, along with scientist/skeptic/magician Doubting Dave (played by David Acer, who is also a writer on the show), scour the world in search of unexplained phenomena. Are there prehistoric mega-sharks hiding deep in our oceans? Is there an underwater U.F.O. base off the coast of Puerto Rico? Who built Stonehenge, and what does it do? Could the dinosaurs have been wiped out by an asteroid from space? Did an ancient King named Midas really have the power to turn everything he touched into gold? Are there hundreds of ghosts trapped under the streets of Edinburgh? Did a race of giant humans once walk the Earth? Does the fire goddess Pele live deep inside Mount Kilauea? Is there an ancient sea monster lurking in the dark waters of Loch Ness? And the list goes on.

Produced by Apartment 11 Productions, Mystery Hunters has, to date, enjoyed three seasons and 65 episodes, and continues to garner awards and accolades around the world, including eight Gemini nominations (the Canadian equivalent of the Emmys), a Platinum Best of Show prize at the Aurora Awards in Salt Lake City, a 2006 Parent's Choice Award, and a 2007 Alliance for Children & Television Award of Excellence. David Acer has also received two Gemini nominations for his writing on the show (2005 and 2007), as well as a spin-off book deal with Kidscan Press.

In September of 2007, the first-ever Mystery Hunters DVD was released in Canada, a three-episode collection timed for Halloween called Mystery Hunters: Beastly Beings and Monstrous Mysteries, and in the Fall of 2008, a Mystery Hunters/Doubting Dave guide to paranormal tricks and hoaxes called Gotcha! 18 Amazing Ways to Freak Out Your Friends will be published by Kids Can Press.

In October of 2007, Mystery Hunters won a prestigious 2007 Japan Prize (sponsored by the Japanese television network NHK). The STONEHENGE episode (from Season III), written by David Acer and Sara Edelson, and directed by Serge Marcil, Eli Gorn and Zsolt Luka, was awarded the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Prize in the Early Education category.

A Typical Episode

Araya and Christina introduce their respective mysteries (sometimes they’re related, sometimes they’re not), then they dig deeper to try to get answers by talking to witnesses, questioning experts, and examining the actual site of the mystery, often in the hopes that it will reoccur. Occasionally, they combine forces to investigate a single mystery (e.g., KING TUT in Season 1, PRINCESS ANASTASIA in Season II, GIANT SHARKS, THE CHUPACABRA and STONEHENGE in Season III). They also contact Doubting Dave at “Discovery Headquarters” for advice and input when they reach an impasse

In addition, in what’s called the "Mystery Lab," Doubting Dave performs and teaches a trick, hoax or experiment viewers can do at home that explores one or both of the mysteries in the episode from a scientific and/or skeptical angle. He also has a segment called “The V-Files,” wherein the Mystery Illustrator (a laptop computer) purportedly renders a viewer’s question into an animated short (these are created from actual letters and e-mails by animator Bruce Simpson), then he answers the question. The questions come from real kids, and are usually thematically related to the mysteries in the episode (e.g., in the episode wherein Araya and Christina investigate the possible existence of living prehistoric giant sharks called Magalodons, the V-File is an answer to the question, “Do sharks cure cancer?”).