Star Trek TNG is the background watching GOAT, I can leave it on for hours, dip in and out, be doing 6 other things and still be entertained and invested. This week I didn’t see a single episode, instead watching Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction (BB:FoF) in the same capacity.

The construction of the show is simple, hosted by TNG’s Tom Riker, Jonathan Frakes (who starts as host in season two, so ignore the first season) is standing in a cabinet of curiosities studio set, he shows us a simple visual illusion (turn your device to see the face appear in the one above) which puts across our core theme; things are not as they seem. After another brief intro by Frakes we launch into the first story, these dramatised ‘reenactments’ take place in small towns and simple locations. They’re somewhere between modern day ghost stories and simplistic morality tales, people will find fortunes and keep their homes, lonely travellers will offer sage advice and magically disappear. Lots of people will turn out to have been dead the entire time. It’s the kinda stuff I imagine you read in children’s books based on the Bible.

Each show has five of these and at the end Frakes asks you to guess which are fact and which are fiction. This is the part of the show you’ve seen, Riker telling you that you are wrong for 50 seconds.

It was my onboarding too, I’ve never heard of the show until this video trended in the twitter replies of the wrong.

Some further reading reveals most of the shows stories as fiction, with the factual ones being heavily embellished, but that’s somewhat not the point, one must forgive entertainment for its lies. They’re also very funny lies, the marathoning of it revealing patterns you wouldn’t see elsewise. For example the use of the ultimate American authority figure; The Cop. BB:FoF uses cops as mystic arbiters of facts, not only have they heard the story of the helpful trucker who changes your tire and then
D I S A P P E A R S before. They’ve heard it five times before on this stretch of highway. It’s perhaps not surprising – what group is more perfect for this in the American story? Who else can lend such creedence to a campfire story.

There’s also this infinite quotability that keeps me watching, you’ll be engrossed in your second-screening only to be interrupted by Frakes asking you,
‘Can you remember the tallest man you’ve ever seen?’
‘Have you noticed what big stars real estate agents have become?’ or the end of the episode, where he’ll drop classics like;
‘What did our researchers have to say about this one? absolutely nothing, we made it up.’

My girlfriend and have been bouncing these lines off each other all week, the show is infectious, but in such a cosy and fun way. I’m fairly sure that wasn’t the intent, I think we were meant to be kept up at night by the horror writer who heard a child calling to him thought his walls, only to find a child’s skeleton in a secret room. But whatever seriousness is imparted, however life or death it *seems*, it’s constructed inside such a cheeky faux environment that it can’t possible hope to pay off.

When we run out of BB:FoF we’ll find another passive watching experience, maybe we’ll go back to Frasier or I’ll force my Girlfriend to get into DS:9. But until then I’ll be here, watching Jonathan Frakes manhandle increasingly unlikely props and ask stupid questions, against a backdrop of forgettable actors saying terrible dialogue. I’ll make sure to forget which was fact or fiction and recount stories as truth wherever I can, what is life without the factoid. After all,
‘Have you noticed how many successful restaurants are theme based these days?’