Advertisement
TV Shows

Season 2 of Museum Secrets Premieres this week!

Season 2 of Museum Secrets Premieres this week!

Museum Secrets, the Canadian television show that explores museums from around the world returns for a second season on History Television, beginning January 12th, 2012 at 10PM EST/PST.

Museum Secrets tells of stories behind objects at museums that the history books don’t tell. It’s a captivating show because of the spectacular photography in the museums (and their hidden spaces) in several countries around the world. In addition, the experiments they do with leading researchers and people personally connected to the objects add a nice live human element to the series about history – which is often incorrectly thought of as a dry and academic topic! With animated sequences and cleaver narration, the series also leaves lots of room for humor. Their audiences learn many details about ancient characters lives, that they may not have known before…

Advertisement

Narrating Museum Secrets is acclaimed Canadian actor Colm Feore, who stars in historical-drama The Borgias and has appeared in The Chronicles of Riddick, Thor and The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Highlights from this season include a visit to the Imperial War Museum, where behind two battered dolls lies the story of a housewife-turned-spy who endured brutal torture at the hands of the Nazis; and the National Archeological Museum of Athens, where a scholar obsessed with Alexander the Great road-tests the most implausible of protective body armor. The series also takes viewers to the State Hermitage Museum, where a young Canadian professor travels across the globe to complete his homage to ancient Scythian mummies’ intriguing body art after reading of their discovery deep below the permafrost of Russia.

Advertisement

Museum Secrets has just been nominated for 2 awards from History Makers International, and in the past were nominated for a Gemini and a Rocky Award, for their work on the TV series and the cross-platform components.

At www.museumsecrets.tv, fans of the show will find web exclusive secrets, video, and short, interactive experiences of hands-on history that delve deeper into the stories they see in each episode. A unique web interface called “The Navigator,” lets visitors see secrets of the past swim before their eyes. From this mysterious and evocative world of objects, they can collect their favourites and save them to a personalized “My Discoveries” page, create annotations, and share their page with friends. The series web site also provides links to high quality streaming video of full broadcast episodes on History.ca.

A sneak peak at the first three episodes on this season of Museum Secrets!

SE02EP01: Museum Secrets: Inside the State Hermitage Museum (Thursday, January 12 at 10PM ET/PT)

Founded by Catherine the Great, the State Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg, Russia, is one of the world’s oldest and largest museums, boasting 3 million treasures of art and antiquity, and visited by over 2 million people every year. Inside the Hermitage, we shine infra-red light on blackened mummies to reveal the strange tattoos of an ancient race, then visit a chamber of horrors to investigate why Peter the Great had a penchant for the macabre. We enter the private chambers of Catherine the Great to discover a device she used to improve her sex life….

SE02EP02: Museum Secrets: Inside the American Museum of Natural History (Thursday, January 19 at 10PMET/PT)

Advertisement

From dinosaurs to meteorites to the origins of the human species, the American Museum of Natural History houses 32 million objects, is visited by over 4 million people annually, and has a stellar research staff that mounts over 100 expeditions every year. In this episode, we meet an American farm boy whose love for Africa changed the image of African wildlife from scary to noble. We witness the mating rituals of a 400 million year old crab species whose unique blood harbours secrets crucial to modern medicine, then crack open a dinosaur egg to uncover a clue that overturns a long held misconception about a supposedly murderous species…

SE02EP03:Museum Secrets: Inside the National Archeological Museum of Athens (Thursday, January 26 at 10PM ET/PT)

The world’s most important museum dedicated to the history of ancient Greece, the National Archaeological Museum displays 11,000 exhibits from 7000 BC to the Roman conquest. In this episode, we accelerate an ancient warship to ramming speed to discover why Athenian democracy beat Persian tyranny, then visit a king’s grave to reveal how bogus archeology helped fuel the pseudo-historical ravings of Adolf Hitler. We suit volunteers in armour made of bronze and armour made of linen, and then shoot arrows at them to discover which is better…

Advertisement

Click here to learn more about Season 1 of Museum Secrets

Advertisement