TELEVISION
FT’s very own couch potato, STU NEVILLE, casts an eye over the small screen’s current fortean offerings
Prime Bigfootery
For a decade between 2010 and 2020, as happens with fortean topics, the focus was on cryptozoology, and, as usual, particularly on the big hairy beasts. Now that the networks have rediscovered lights in the sky, Sasquatches have been relegated to the streaming services, and Amazon Prime has an absolute plethora of them. The law of imaginative titling is in full force – at least 50% have names culled from just eight words including Expedition, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Quest and Truth – but there’s much of interest.
The Bigfoot Files was originally shown on Channel 4 in 2013, and features Mark Evans, Prof Brian Sykes and Sykes’s disappointing and/or surprising DNA results: spoiler alert, but Zana the suspected Almasty was actually a subSaharan African woman, Yeti hairs a sort of unknown bear and Bigfoot ones the usual collection of deer, goat and Mr EJ Hawkins of Boise, Idaho. A highlight is the reaction of Justin Smeja, star of the “Bigfoot Steak” saga, when Sykes gives him his verdict (it’s a bear), which actually
These days his shirt bulges more at navel than pectoral level
makes you think Smeja was sincere, if wrong. Either that or he’s a very good actor.
$10 Million Bigfoot Bounty, despite its subreality gameshow tone, is at least as interesting for the process it employs as for the results gleaned. It’s hosted by emeritus-Superman Dean Cain (these days his shirt bulges more at navel than pectoral level, though I’m in no position to criticise) with judgely support from Dr Todd Disotell, champion of Environmental DNA and possessor of an impressive Mohican haircut. Teams of two are dispatched to putatively Sasquatchy glades and tasked with gathering specific types of evidence. Some of these teams are relatively well-known – Justin Smeja, for one – but it’s instructive to see them focused on the quest over and above their public profiles. Each episode, a team is eliminated, having failed to gain evidence even as inconclusive as the others.
Expedition Sasquatch (told you) is well worth a watch: film-maker Justin Chernipeski tramps about in snowy Canadian mountains, quietly and methodically searching for clues. Interspersed is anecdotal evidence from Robert McNeill of Alberta Sasquatch, clearly well-versed in the lore and with his own experiences. The programme remains level-headed. Nothing is cited as “proof” of anything, but what makes it stand out is the tone: it eschews the usual running about in low-light, whooping and thumping trees in favour of an almost meditative commentary treating the mission as ordinary wildlife photography. Its sequel, Expedition Sasquatch 2, is equally absorbing – Smeja crops up again – and each is admirably concise, respectively 75 and 50 minutes. Thought-provoking, rational, well-made, and not an excitable whoop in sight.