Mermaids: The Body Found
| Mermaids | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Sid Bennett Director of Animation - Steve Gomez |
| Produced by | Darlow Smithson, Tom Brisley |
| Written by | Charlie Foley Vaibhav Bhatt |
| Story by | Charlie Foley Vaibhav Bhatt |
| Distributed by | Discovery Communications Animal Planet |
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Language | English |
Mermaids is a documentary[1] originally aired as Mermaids: The Body Found on American TV channels Animal Planet (May 27, 2012) and Discovery Channel (June 17, 2012). It tells a story of a scientific team's investigative efforts to uncover the source behind mysterious underwater recordings of an unidentified marine body. The show presents the generally discredited aquatic ape hypothesis as evidence that mermaids exist, along with a digitally manufactured video. A sequel broadcast called Mermaids: The New Evidence aired May 26, 2013.
Mermaids: The Body Found, its sequel Mermaids: The New Evidence and several other similar programs dealing with other claims, such as the Channel 4's The Last Dragon and The Discovery Channel's Shark Week dealing with a purportedly discovered "monster" shark in Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives are all recent examples of documentaries that are used to show creatures that were once believed to not exist or be extinct.
Ratings
Mermaids: The Body Found received 1.9 million views during its US telecast premiere on Sunday, May 27, 2012. This is the network's most watched telecast since the Steve Irwin memorial special in September 2006.[2]
Criticism
Mermaids has been criticized and called a docufiction.
See also
- The Last Dragon, a similar program airing on Animal Planet that attempted to describe dragons in a scientific manner.
- Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives was also a similar program that aired on Discovery Channel in which actors, playing doctors and other experts, theorized that the megalodon, a prehistoric shark that lived millions of years ago, was actually still in existence and responsible for attacks on boaters and swimmers off the coast of South Africa. Like "Mermaids", the show wove a great deal of fiction around the accepted facts that the megalodon did, indeed, exist at one time. The show told of fictitious encounters with the animal, including fictional footage of an attack on a private boat.
