• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 8 hours ago

TV’s history of showcasing attractions that were once seen mainly in circus sideshows is something that has long been noted.

I should know because I am the one who noted it -- writing at various times how TV was borrowing the style and philosophy of sideshow culture to draw people “into the tent,” so to speak.

But it occurred to me recently that TV has also taken inspiration from another sector with a long history -- the world of supermarket tabloids.

This realization materialized when I got wind of a three-part series coming up next week on Discovery Channel called “Bigfoot Took Her.”

The show has two investigators -- Robert Collier and Jessica Chobot (pictured above) -- taking a deep dive into a mystery dating back to 1987, when a 16-year-old girl disappeared from a national forest in California. The locals have long blamed Bigfoot.

So, did Bigfoot do it or didn’t he? On the show, the investigators will try to learn the answer to that question.

But it is the “Bigfoot Took Her” title that revived memories and impressions of the golden age of supermarket tabloids, those checkout line staples that were read by millions before the Internet ruined print media.

Bigfoot stories were a big part of that world with an emphasis on Bigfoot sightings. The stories were often accompanied by photos of the hairy beasts that were so grainy and blurry that this photographic evidence was really no evidence at all.

Even today, with cell phone cameras in everybody’s pockets, no one seems able to get a photo of Bigfoot. 

Moreover, those old photos always had the creature stomping around alone through deep woods, leading some to wonder if these hirsute bipeds had families or even companion Bigfoots (Bigfeet is not acceptable as a plural for Bigfoot, according to a Google inquiry).

Nevertheless, Bigfoot was one of the bread-and-butter topics of the tabloids, along with other sightings -- most notably, Elvis Presley and Hitler long after they were presumed to have died, plus sightings of UFOs.

TV has long trod the Bigfoot space with shows such as “Finding Bigfoot,” “Expedition Bigfoot” and “Discovering Bigfoot.” To my knowledge, none of them ever found a Bigfoot.

The story of how a Bigfoot came along and took a teen to who-knows-where is not unlike the stories about people who say they were abducted by aliens -- also a staple of the supermarket tabloids.

Docuseries about UFOs, alien abductions and the existence of restless spirits in abandoned houses and mental hospitals have also been prominent for the last 20 years or more on TV, particularly on cable.

Way back in 2003, History Channel found a way to combine Hitler and UFOs in one show. The title was “3rd Reich: Hitler’s UFOs and the Nazis’ Most Powerful Weapon.”

Meanwhile, TV’s sideshow culture is reflected in docuseries about people who are unusually tall or short, others who are morbidly obese, people with “strange addictions” to objects and behaviors none of us ever heard of before, and people suffering with large, very conspicuous growths on their skin.

It is true that all of these shows -- concentrated mainly on TLC and A&E over the years -- make every effort to humanize their subjects and for the most part, they succeed.

Long, long ago -- in the 1970s, if memory serves -- journalists were asked in a survey what they thought would be the story of the century if it actually came to pass, and the winner was “Hitler is alive.”

Back then, he was not yet too old to be alive, but today, he would be 131 years old, which means the “Hitler is alive” story is now as dead as he is.

By contrast, Elvis Presley would be 90 years old today if he had not died in 1977 at the age of 42. However, the possibility that he was still alive for years afterward became a tabloid cliché.

Is he alive or isn’t he? As far as I know, no TV show has ever come along to investigate this burning question. It is an opportunity for a docuseries if there ever was one.