Adventure

The body, found in a Danish peat bog, was buried 8 ft. deep. It was naked except for a cap and belt, had a one-day stubble of beard on its face and was perfectly preserved. The plaited-leather hangman's noose around its neck indicated that the man had been strangled before being thrown into the bog. The peat cutters who found it hastened to call the police. But the police were unable to solve the mystery and did not really care. The body had been lying in the peat for some 2,000 years.

Science Nonfiction. How the body was found, what probably caused death, what undigested food still reposed in its stomach after two millenniums, how the food had been cooked and what it tasted like, were all entertainingly explained last week on CBS's Adventure (Sun. 4:30 p.m., E.D.T.), one of TV's most consistently fascinating grown-up-type shows. In its three years of existence, Adventure has proved itself the busiest science nonfiction show of them all by expertly transporting its viewers from the outer reaches of the universe to the inside of a chromosome. In the process, it has won a hatful of prizes, including a Peabody Award as TV's best educational program and an Ohio State University citation as the best network culture program.

The show is a joint effort of CBS and the American Museum of Natural History, and museum scientists and ideas are freely used in combination with CBS personnel and techniques. The technique is a mixture of live action, film and remote pickups--in the news-show manner. Adventure also claims to have initiated new TV techniques, such as shadow play with mimes to suggest an event of the past, and the ballet to give a concrete illustration of an abstract scientific principle, e.g., the "hereditary ballet," in which the dancers are identifiable as specific genes, to show how a child inherits various characteristics from his parents.

Scientists Made Human. The narrator who gives the show identity and continuity is CBS News Commentator Charles Collingwood, a suave guide who, in the course of his duties, has wrestled with a loft. alligator, struggled with an 18-ft. anaconda, plunged into the Atlantic in January, and urbanely commented on under sea matters through a diver's helmet 30 ft. below the surface of the Pacific. Collingwood once also gave his audience an authentic South American recipe, with step-by-step illustrations, on how to shrink a human head. An actual shrunken head was, of course, in camera range during the show.

Collingwood believes that, among other things, Adventure, by putting scientists on the TV screen, has shown viewers that they are not necessarily dusty or stuffy people. Some are witty, wellrounded, even handsome. The show has ranged widely over the fields of archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, ecology, mammalogy, oceanography, paleontology, ichthyology, and as often as possible embryology, largely because the museum embryologist happens to be Dr. Evelyn Shaw, a very pretty redhead. This week Collingwood took a look at the magnificent Bayeux Tapestry (some 230 ft. long), and through it at the bloodstained hills of Hastings in 1066 and British national origins. As usual, Adventure was a lively adventure.

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