Ben Affleck is making the rounds promoting his latest film, The Accountant, and stopped by The Graham Norton Show. That was a big mistake. The host dredged up a role from Affleck's early acting days as a presenter on the educational program The Voyage of the Mimi.
While Affleck mentioned he worked on the show as early as 10-years-old, the first clip Norton pulled up was a bit older (Affleck guessed 14) and just happened to include work from his first trip to England. But keep watching as Norton then brings out what he calls Affleck's “unengaged listening face” which he absolutely still uses today.
There's some old clips of The Voyage of the Mimi on YouTube of course if you're interested in seeing more of this. Here's how one uploader described the show:
Here's a little clip from the 1984 educational PBS TV series Voyage of the Mimi. This show consisted of two halves, episodes and expeditions. The episodes were like an educational made for TV movie and were 15 minutes each. Immediately following each episode was an expedition show which also lasted 15 minutes but was the actors as themselves discussing with scientists the educational topics which were in the previous episode. The expeditions felt like a 3-2-1 contact type show where the episodes were more like a movie and generally more entertaining. Thousands of American middle school children had been forced to watch this series in school and complete assignments based on it. Even though this series first aired over 20 years ago, it's likely some schools are still running it today. This clip came from expedition 9, Goose Bumps.
Now if we can just get a scene for Affleck in Justice League where The Flash explains the science of something to him, we'll come full circle.