MovieChat Forums > History Detectives (2003) Discussion > How much of this is Google...

How much of this is Google...

posted 15 years ago by one-highlander
4 replies | jump to latest

Love the show...Tivo it every week, but having worked on "reality" tv shows for years, I'm willing to bet that most of the B-Roll research we see is simply staged for the cameras.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the HDs research is done by interns, and the Library scenarios, or the seemingly endless hours of research through books, are simply props put together by one of the producers for the audience's sake, or to sell the credentials of the "detectives."

Just my $.02

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] 13tongimp 14 years ago

There are some segments which are pure filler, and there is absolutely no "detective" work going on. The one that jumps to mind is the German prisoner camp. Some woman wonders about an area of land in her home town and how it might have been a prison camp for captured German soldiers during WWII. Whoever was "investigating" it (can't recall) went to the town hall or something and they had a whole minature display of the camp. It wasn't some obscure bit of knowledge...it was part of a display!!! So yeah, sometimes they don't do a whole bunch of research but instead try to make it seem as if they are doing so when in actuality the facts are already there in some obvious place.

http://www.13tongimp.com/

[–] shadow_priest_x 11 years ago

I'm not sure how you arrived at the conclusion that there is "absolutely no detective work" going on because ONE case didn't require much. I've watched several episodes of the show and some of the cases obviously required a lot of digging. I have been pretty impressed by the way they've taken a question that I would've considered unanswerable and found a clear and convincing answer to it.

[–] rogerneon 9 years ago

Very little detective work took place on camera, and the presenters did almost none of it.