What did I watch on TV when I was a small child, when I wasn’t watching high-minded social dramas about stroke-suffering steelworkers? I was lucky enough to grow up in Michigan, within broadcasting range of Canadian TV, and so had greater opportunities than those of you in warmer but less blessed parts of America. That meant The Friendly Giant, TV Ontario’s The Polka-Dot Door, and, most important to a parapsychology-obsessed grade-schooler, Beyond Reason.
I started thinking about Beyond Reason after I started seeing the inescapable promos for tonight’s NBC psychic* competition Phenomenon. Except that Beyond Reason was far cooler than any show with Criss Angel could ever be. On this game show–kind of What’s My Line? with ESP–a panel that usually included an astrologer, a graphologist and a psychic (I believe there was sometimes a palm reader or a numerologist) tried to guess the identity of a mystery guest. In this episode, viewable at the awesome CBC archives website, the psychic nails the challenge with eerie precision. Mind freak!
Someone remake this show, now, please. Anyone else have a Canadian-TV madeleine to share?
*Update: Or “mentalist,” whatever that is