Underplayed Gems

Mayday (2003)

Mayday poster
Directed by
Bryn Higgins
Genre
docudrama
Country
Canada
Length
25 seasons, 287 episodes
Rated
TV-14
Rating
8.2 of 10 from 289 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

This series examines real aviation disasters. It uses reenactments and interviews to show what caused each accident and how investigators pieced together the evidence.

informativedramaticanalyticalsoberingforensichistoricalmethodicaleducational

What happens

Mayday is a Canadian documentary television program examining air crashes, near-crashes, hijackings, bombings, and other disasters. Mayday uses re-enactments and computer-generated imagery to reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to each disaster. In addition, survivors, aviation experts, retired pilots, and crash investigators are interviewed, to explain how the emergencies came about, how they were investigated, and how they might have been prevented. Cineflix started production of the series on 13 August 2002 (2002-08-13), with a CA$2.5 million budget. In Canada itself, the program premiered on Discovery Channel Canada on 3 September 2003 and narrated by Stephen Bogaert. Outside Canada, Cineflix also secured deals with France 5, Discovery Channel, Canal D, TVNZ, Seven Network, Holland Media Group, and National Geographic Channel to take Mayday in 144 countries and 26 languages. The series was received well by critics and nominated for a number of awards. In 2010, Sharon Zupancic won a Gemini Award for her work on the season-seven episode, "Lockerbie Disaster", that depicts the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. A University of New South Wales senior lecturer, Raymond Lewis, conducted a study on teaching strategy loosely based on the series. Lewis's results indicated using the strategy had "a positive effect on learning outcomes" for prospective pilots. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

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