Mystery Lab – Netflix Season 1 Review

Episode Guide

Mysteries Of The Bermuda Triangle
20 Million Deaths Caused By Great Plague
Learning How To Time Travel
From Wolf to Dog
Zombie Apocalypse. What If It Was Real?
The Great Extinction
Path to Artificial Superintelligence
Global Warming. A Big Conspiracy?

Mystery Lab is a weird and wonderful Brazilian documentary exploring some of the more fascinating mysteries and questions about the world we live in. Between planes going missing in Bermuda Triangle and the scientific possibility of a Zombie Apocalypse, each of Mystery Lab’s campy episodes dive deep into their chosen topic. The result is a series that adds a surprising blend of educational and engaging content, slick animations and a uniquely enjoyable tone.

Each of the episodes follow a similar pattern, with discussions aimed directly at the camera combining with animations, archival footage from films and TV shows along with experiments practiced in the lab. Sometimes there’s a light narrative woven through the episodes too but the show never loses sight of its purpose along the way. There’s some genuinely informative material here too and the way Mystery Lab plays up these different mysteries, before systematically exploring every facet of what could and could not happen, is great to see.

Tying all of this together is our host Felipe Castanhari, who’s joined in his lab by supercomputer Briggs, Dr Tavani and Betinho. Each of these characters bring something different to the table and their interactions together are theatrical and fun. Betinho constantly jumps to conclusions and is generally used as comedic relief. By comparison, Dr Tav is all about chemistry and her informative discussions break down the nitty gritty science. Briggs gives out the hard facts while Felipe is a good all-rounder; an enigmatic narrator that keeps your attention through each episode.

There’s definitely a cheesy 90’s-esque feel to a lot of this and the different sets and re-enactment scenarios really play into that. The show is pretty quirky and there’s definitely some brownie points here for the way the series looks at tried and tested topics from a slightly different perspective.

Having said that, if you’re looking for something a lot more straight forward and don’t like the comedic edge, this may not be the documentary for you. There are a lot of jokes and the re-enactments are laced with exaggerated dialogue used intentionally to make things sound a lot more exciting.

Overall though, Mystery Lab is a really compelling and interesting documentary series on Netflix. It may not be the best documentary of the year but it does have a unique tone that’s hard not to love. With each episode clocking in at a little under 30 minutes and lots of popular topics explored, Mystery Lab is well worth your time.

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