It's a Mystery was a networked Children's ITV programme which ran for five series from 12 September 1996 to 9 May 2002. It was produced by The Media Merchants Television Company Ltd and Meridian Broadcasting Ltd. In Series five, the show was retitled as Mystery and featured different presenters. It was a magazine show featuring unusual stories including about UFOs, ghosts and other difficult to explain happenings, some of which were solved while others remained unexplained. It had three presenters for the first four series the best known was probably Neil Buchanan who presented regular arts show Art Attack between 1990 and 2007, Sophie Aldred did the first series only and Gail Porter from magazine show How 2 along with Tristan Bancks, they were replaced in 2000 by Ben Jones and Shelley Blond. Steve Wilson and Shiarra Juthan presented the 2002 last series
Format
It was a programme that educated children by challenging them to solve a mystery. Usually this would involve people telling stories of mysterious occurrences that have happened to them, such as a Man in a Van driving up to a roundabout and seeing his exact duplicate across the roundabout, driving the same vehicle. Other times, the presenter would show unexplained phenomena such as ghosts in the Tower of London or the Loch Ness Monster. The presenter would then offer up possible explanations as to what might have been behind the mystery or if there is even an explanation to give. After each story, it would be given a solved or unsolved designation. At the end of each episode, a riddle would be asked for the audience to solve until the next episode. Forty-four episodes were made, and the series regularly made the Children's' Top Ten.
Presenters
The programme was originally presented by Neil Buchanan and Sophie Aldred ; Neil Buchanan, Gail Porter, and Tristan Bancks ; Neil Buchanan, Ben Jones and Shelley Blond ; Steve Wilson and Shiarra Juthan. The series used many actors over the years. These included; Jo-Anne Good, Russell Hookey, Barry Rose, Mike Dyer-Ball, and Hal Dyer.
