John Walsh the Manhunt Guy
John Walsh the Manhunt Guy is an American half-hour children's educational criminal comedy television series, which aired on PBS from September 10, 1993 to June 20, 1998 on PBS. Each of the 100 half-hour episodes aims to teach a specific story of a criminal topic, with skits and song parodies are also performed. Cody Marshall had a deep baritone voice in this episode.
Synopsis[edit | edit source]
John Walsh is a manhunt guy with a fedora and a suit and tie, he combines the serious criminal story with skits, fast paced action, and humor. Each show begins with a cold open, where John Walsh introduced today's episode, followed by an opening credit sequence, as Walsh is seen floating through a montage of criminal images. In later episodes, the theme song is cut short by a static screen. After the opening credits, the announcer would say "Brought to you by...", in which a sponsor billboard is related to the episode's topic. Following that, John Walsh would walk on to the set called Walsh Detective Agency, which is filled with crime individuals, including many "of crime time" contraptions announced dramatically, relevant to the topic of the episode. There are several individual segments that are featured in each episode, such as "Way Cool Detectives", which features an expert on the show's topic, "Consider the Criminal", where John discusses a certain aspect of the topic, "Nifty Criminal Experiment", where the audience is shown how to do a criminal experiment relating to the topic, and "Did you solve that...now you know", where an interesting factoid relevant to that episode's topic was presented. Most half-hour episodes contain a mock song parody and music video in the "Soundtracks of Manhunt" by "You Can Make A Difference Records", substituting a criminal roundup for the lyrics to a popular song. This is usually the last segment of each episode. Each half-hour show ends with John saying "Well that's our show, thanks for watching. if you'll excuse me..." before explaining in a clever description of an activity on topic, followed by him saying "See ya!" afterwards. The credits sometimes rolled next to a series of outtakes from the episode.
Soundtrack[edit | edit source]
The show's theme song consisted of a house beat with John's name shouted throughout the duration of the song. The sounds and speed fluctuations of the voice were accomplished through a vocoder and electronic pitch fluctuation. The theme song is credited to Mike Greene and Michael H. Shamberg.