Series Spotlight: Close Encounters TV

Two blokes in a cramped British garage, talking UFOs, ghosts, and whatever is trending on TikTok that week. No budget, no plan, no pretending they have the answers.

That’s Close Encounters TV. Mark Christopher Lee and Guy started as co-hosts on Nub TV, a show that went out on Sky in the UK, two mates down the pub riffing on the paranormal with the kind of English banter that makes the whole thing feel like an argument you’d actually want to listen in on. When they brought the format into Mark’s garage in rural Hertfordshire, it became something weirder and better. “The X-Files meets Wayne’s World,” Mark says. “That DIY ethic.”

The garage is actually the garage

Nothing is staged. The space is chaotic and cramped because it’s a real working garage that doubles as a recording studio for Mark’s band, The Pocket Gods, and a film set for the show. The aesthetic isn’t a choice meant to signal authenticity. It just is authentic. Mark once ran into Noel Gallagher at the Ivors music awards, got chatting at the bar, and Gallagher mentioned he didn’t have his own studio. Mark told him he had one in his garage. Gallagher was, apparently, a little jealous. Mark went home and wrote a song about it. That song is now one of The Pocket Gods’ most-streamed tracks on Spotify.

Also, Mark and Guy share the exact same birthday. They didn’t know this when Guy joined Mark’s record label. They found out later. Weird, as they’d probably say.

Genuinely into it

Both hosts have had their own unexplainable experiences. That’s not a premise for the show, it’s the reason the show exists. The passion is real, and it shows in ways that separate Close Encounters TV from the more theatrical end of the paranormal genre. “We don’t have the answers, we don’t pretend to be fake gurus, we don’t do it for the money,” Mark says. “We do it because we genuinely want people to open their minds.”

The show has a running thread: trying, and almost certainly failing, to tie everything into one grand unified theory of the paranormal. The fun is in the attempt. Mark is clear about the danger of going too deep. “Too many good people lose their sanity going into the rabbit hole,” he says. Close Encounters TV keeps one foot in the pub.

Professor Avi Loeb in the garage

Mark has known Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb for a while now. Loeb first appeared in Mark’s debut feature God Versus Aliens, and they’ve stayed in touch. When Loeb turned up on Close Encounters TV, it created one of the stranger contrasts in paranormal television: one of the world’s most serious scientists sitting in a cluttered British garage talking about alien material recovered from the ocean floor. Mark has a BSc in science, which helps. “He likes what we do and appreciates getting his message out onto a bigger platform,” Mark says. The conversations inspired Loeb to start his own YouTube channel.

The show has the kind of range that makes that pairing make sense. UFOs, the Annunaki, crop circles (there are some nearby), Roman ghosts, the law of attraction, CE5 contact protocols. They use what’s around them: London is 40 miles away, which is close enough for a day trip to look for the Illuminati. Mark took his kids into the City of London with a couple of cameras and no real plan. They found what they claim was the London HQ. “We had no plan, not much clue, but somehow we tracked it down and created chaos,” he says. “It was a little scary but we got out alive.”

The strangest moment

A woman came on claiming to be from the alien race of the Annunaki. Mark has an open mind, he says, but he lost it when they asked her to speak some Annunaki language and she actually did it. He describes it as well weird and funny. That combination, those two things happening at once, is probably the best summary of what Close Encounters TV is.

What to know before you press play

“Come on into our X-Files garage, have an open mind, and be prepared to have a few laughs on the way to the truth,” Mark says. “It is out there.” The show is an antidote to the stone-faced end of paranormal television. The hosts are true believers who know how to laugh at themselves, which turns out to be a rare combination. New episodes are coming, including one where they try CE5 contact protocols and another shot entirely in London tracking the Illuminati. More chaos. Same garage.

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Streaming now on Relay.