Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction

So I recently ordered the first season of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction on DVD, and I just finished watching it (disappointingly, the first set only includes six episodes). For those of you not familiar with this show, it's basically a mix between the Twilight Zone and Unsolved Mysteries. Each episode tells about five stories, each of which have something supernatural or peculiar happening, and at the end of the episode, the host reveals which stories are fictional, and which were inspired by true events. It's a neat little show for anybody who enjoys freaky, ghost story around the campfire type tales.

Anyway, while I'm still a huge fan of the show (I will be buying each season as they're released), I do also realize I was probably remembering the show with some rose-colored glasses. The acting isn't all that great, but that's expected (although every now and then you'll recognize an actor from before he or she landed a "big" break). But the two things that jumped out at me was the need to hammer home certain points to a ridiculous extent, and the apparent inability for most characters to "act" things out.

The latter observation was especially noticeable in the story titled "E-mail" (from Episode 4). We couldn't simply watch the secretary exchange e-mails with the spirit.....nor could we just allow the natural flow of logic transpire. Instead, we needed her to narrate every action she took. She'd read each e-mail she received out loud, then she'd orally respond before she types out what she had just said. When the spirit instructs her to find his niece, instead of showing her thinking, and then looking in the phonebook (as anyway would naturally do), they have her say "How? How do I find her?" and then practically spells it out with "I know, I'll look in the phone book!"

The second episode's "The Subway" is a great example of using a sledgehammer to drive home a point. In that episode, a couple get onto a subway that goes nowhere, with some creepy looking guy as the only other passenger. They're so thoroughly freaked that they get off at the first stop, which turns out to be the one they originally got onto, and immediately return home. Upon their arrival, they discover that their neighbor accidentally left the gas on. They're able to save her, but only because of the freaky subway ride. When they're in their neighbor's apartment, they see a picture of her late husband, which is of course the creepy man on the subway. The neighbor then feels the need to absolutely, positively dumb down the entire segment for us by stating that her husband promised to always protect and look over her. It's like, yeah, we already pieced together that message, despite its immense complexity, a while ago.

Anyway, the premise is cool, and definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of the whole sci-fi genre or if you appreciate shows like Unsolved Mysteries and the Twilight Zone. But be warned, there's only six episodes, and it comes with absolutely no special features whatsoever. This is really too bad, because it would have been cool if the DVD included the details on the actual stories that the "Fact" stories were based upon (of course, this would also reveal how many creative liberties the reenactment took). Anyway, if you've never seen the show before, this may be something you might want to rent before dishing out $15-20 to purchase it.