Bob McDonald as the long-running host of the CBC radio science show Quirks and Quarks has made a career of explaining headline-hitting science to Canadians.

Magical Mystery Cures, on the other hand, directed and produced by Nick Orchard and written and hosted by Bob McDonald for the CBC’s Doc Zone, mesmerizes not by translating science, but parodying our culture and its obsession with youth.

“Our purpose wasn’t to expose,” explains Nick Orchard of Soapbox Productions.

The CBC doc instead entertains as science guy McDonald tries out the varied pills and potions claiming miraculous results, and lets the audience ultimately decide whether their claims of being scientifically proven are valid.

“Some things do work, in a limited way. A lot of the skin treatments, you have to go back and redo six months later. Some of them were very questionable. And so that was the approach to the show, to get behind products and their claims,” Orchard said.

Of course, many of the products featured in the CBC documentary are bogus, meaning Health Canada considers them neither drugs nor pharmaceuticals, but “nutraceuticals” deemed safe only because they do no harm.

Here the Nature of Things documentary follows a trend in scientific journalism that aims at scientific literacy not by showing the achievements of scientists, but by uncovering bad science.

Examples of bad science news includes Climategate, the influence of drug companies on scientific journals and vitamin scares.

The complexity of headline-hitting science is partly to blame, something Orchard concedes as a documentary producer.

To get round that obstacle, Magical Mystery Cures puts McDonald, a known and respected science translator for Canadians, front and center.

“I’m sure science programming for mainstream TV can be boring. But if you have a David Suzuki or a Bob McDonald, who makes it so easily understandable and engaging, it can work,” Orchard argued.

Magical Mystery Cures airs Thursday at 9 pm on the main CBC network, and repeats Friday at 10 p.m. on CBC News Network.