Sometimes the best TV shows come with little fanfare. They sneak up on you, bubbling up from seemingly nowhere.
PBS's "MythQuest" is such a program.
It's aired on a few PBS stations since January but premieres on most this month (including Sunday at 7 p.m. on KBYU-Ch. 11 Aimed at "tweens," children ages 9 to 13, "MythQuest" will appeal to adults too with its fanciful melding of contemporary sensibilities and tales of yore.
In an era when many prime-time series — "The X-Files," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Alias" — create their own mythological story arcs, "MythQuest" shows viewers the ancient myths that still influence today's pop entertainment.
The fantasy-adventure series begins as siblings Alex (Christopher Jacot) and Cleo (Meredith Henderson) discover their archaeologist-computer scientist father, Matt (Joseph Krell), has been sucked through a portal into the world of myths stored on his computer's hard drive.
Alex and Cleo discover ways to get in and out of this CyberMuseum to search for Dad. When they're inside the computer, they inhabit the body of a mythological character.
In Sunday night's episode, "Isis and Osiris Part I," they use the information gained from Cleo's experience as the Oracle of Delphi to search for their father in ancient Egypt. Alex jumps into the myth world and finds himself living out the role of Osiris.
"MythQuest" mixes the historical settings of "Voyagers!" with the body inhabiting of "Quantum Leap" in a combination that will remind some viewers of PBS's "Wishbone" (minus the cute pooch). But "MythQuest" is clearly aimed at an older audience and concentrates on myths from myriad cultures (Greek, American Indian, English, etc.).
The show has solid production values and a gentle, genuine sense of humor.
Executive producer David Braun said the goal with "MythQuest" is to retell mythological stories as they've been passed down through the ages.
"Heroes for today's kids are often athletes or movie stars, and those are unattainable things for most people. Those are mostly physical things you're given at birth," Braun said. "We wanted to present some stories with heroes who had feet of clay, who had flaws and sometimes didn't completely succeed.
"There are sometimes bittersweet qualities to these stories, and those are things that keep myths going, because they're realistic."