I'm already watching season 4 of Mythbusters, in English. In Russian they call them either “Legend Busters” or “Myth Busters”.
It's something of a cross between a popular science documentary series and a TV show. It airs on the Discovery Channel in the US and under license in some European countries. Mythbusters is actually really popular among geeks, and not only them.
The premise of the show is this: hosts Adam Savage (Adam Savage) and Jamie Hyneman (Jamie Honeyman) search for various legends and myths, but not just any, only those that carry a grain of truth in them. Moreover, the myths shouldn't overtly contradict science and common sense, they must be reproducible, and not require excessive resources to do so, because the budget isn't made of rubber after all.
Jamie and Adam in a protective suit
After choosing a myth, the showmen-craftsmen construct the conditions from the legend in their workshop and try to reproduce the result. To make it all more fun to watch, it is interspersed with jokes and clowning around authored by Savage, thorough reasoning from Jamie, and ironic remarks from the voiceover narrator. Spectacular stuff like explosions, high-speed camera footage, and funny animated inserts are also common. There's also plenty of constant abuse and mutilation directed at a dummy named Buster.
As food for thought, the show draws parallels with movies and books, gives simple physics and math explanations, and focuses on the scientific method: theory, experiment, correction, result. The latter, by the way, is often quite unexpected even for the mythbusters themselves: they don't know the outcome of the experiments in advance either, and when a myth is successfully confirmed or just yields an informative result, they get excited in a truly American way. Especially Savage, who plays the role of a restless child and therefore is always up to some foolishness. By the looks of it, by the way, he's a born showman and could give a run for their money to many comedians and hosts, especially Russian-speaking ones: he has a sharp tongue, throws metaphors around, and hilariously imitates accents and dialects.
A fun fact: when Jamie was offered to do the show, he replied that he was in, but only if they invited Adam to be his co-host, because he'd get bored alone. Hyneman is a smart guy, and this decision was brilliant: an introvert and a thorough engineer, Jamie perfectly complements the quick-witted jokester Adam. Both of them, however, are excellent jacks of all trades who got their skills while creating special effects for Hollywood movies: Jamie's workshop is in San Francisco, which isn't too far from Los Angeles, right next to which is the dream factory.
When the show gained fame, its budget increased, and the bosses hired an additional crew (Build Team) consisting of artist Kari, hard worker Tory, and electronics guy Grant. Unfortunately, another girl named Scottie, who worked with metal on the show, left for unknown personal reasons. Which made me wonder — do we, the viewers, have the right to know these reasons? I think not, although it would be nice. On the other hand, I once voiced the thought that people who gain fame should be prepared for the flip side of the coin, namely the lack of privacy. On the internet, though, word is that she was fired. Possibly because the show needed the aforementioned people, and Adam and Jamie are quite capable of doing metalwork themselves.
I don't remember which myth this is for, but they often fool around in all sorts of ways to make it look better
While I was writing this, I found out that the hosts themselves mentioned at one of their university appearances, which they give periodically, that Scottie wasn't quite suited for TV. In the sense that making such a show implies playing to the audience, telling the cameraman what you're doing at any given moment, trying out all sorts of spectacular variations of the same technical process, takes, etc.
In principle, that makes sense, especially with the American approach of taking everything to the maximum and grotesque. The supporting team, by the way, was shy and acted insecure at first, but then got used to the cameras and started killing it just as well as the bosses of the enterprise.
And to wrap up the post, and to drum up some interest in the program — here are the myths that I found curious.
1. Can you get a lethal electric shock by taking a leak on the tracks?
2. What happens if you drop a penny from a skyscraper onto a passerby's head? Will they die or not?
3. Can a bridge be collapsed by resonance if a regiment of soldiers marches across it in step?
4. Can you make a cannon out of wood?
5. Is it possible to wash, clean out, and remove the smell from a car in which a decomposing corpse has been lying for several months?
6. Is it true that Archimedes set Roman ships on fire using a system of parabolic bronze mirrors?
7. Is it possible to launch an illegal immigrant from Mexico across the border using a catapult?
and a million more fascinating debunkings of popular culture.
You can download most of the episodes on torrents.ru in Russian, or on www.tvtorrents.com in the bourgeois tongue.