Judging by some of the comments here, this series seems to be making some people quite angry. It's as if they expected the filmakers to produce actual aliens and interview them on camera. For the less literal-minded, Encounters is an interesting and occasionally moving set of four programmes looking at reports of strange phenomena from mainly rural communities in the UK, US, Zimbabwe, and Japan. The approach is sensitive, agnostic and non-judgmental, allowing people who think they saw extraterrestrial or paranormal events to speak for themselves, together with some more academic input from scientists and researchers. The episodes from Texas and Zimbabwe were the best in my view because the interviewees were so varied in terms of background, beliefs (or lack of) and personality, which made the cumulative effect of the testimony more compelling. I was less impressed by the Japanese episode, which included a yoga teacher who seemed to be living on another planet to begin with, but that's a minor point. In general this is well worth a watch.
Review of Encounters
