This comprises six ten minute episodes done in a lovingly detailed 'Programmes for Schools' style that brings back so many childhood memories for me. I remember when very young (before I was of the age to be going to school) watching some of these programmes that turned up on early 1980s morning television where scientists set up experiments in bizarrely empty laboratories. The actual goals of many of the experiments went completely over my head at the time, likely due to my age, but I still remember liking to watch test tubes being filled with strange liquids or bleeping electronic machines taking readings of the results.
Later on during my primary school years I can still remember the ripple of anticipation that went through the class when a rumour went around that instead of being taught for the morning that we were going to be shown a television programme instead. Combined with the almost ritual way in which the enormous boxy television (on its wheeled metal stand that lifted it up above the audience's heads and which made it seem to tower imposingly over the class, whose attention was often fixed directly onto it's blank screen as soon as it appeared) was wheeled into the room and carefully plugged in by the teacher, it brought the excitement of not getting taught for an hour or so to almost fever pitch!
I personally remember the best part of all these classroom screenings was seeing brief glimpses of other programmes as the teacher was scanning back and forth through the tape that they had recorded the broadcast on in order find the correct starting point. There would be glimpses of the end of the last schools programme (which invariably was of more interest than the one we would be meant to be seeing!), and then trailers for other programmes until the countdown clock to the next programme appeared, letting the teacher know they were at the correct point to start the screening.
Now all of these details are so bizarrely specific to a certain era of early to mid-1980s schooling, as well as to a certain era of BBC television in particular, that it was amazing to see it beautifully parodied in the first series of Look Around You, down to the specific filming styles, noodling guitar music over the countdown clock, mysteriously empty labs, the use of the ubiquitous-in-schools BBC Micro Computer during the opening credits, the incomprehensible experiments for pointless goals, the use of bizarre names for characters used in examples during hypothetical examples used in the programme (something which I remember in my class regularly used to cause mirth in its appearance in mathematics textbooks in particular, due to its bizarre juxtaposition with two very English names - such as "Judith has 20p, John has 60p and Partario has £1.50. If travelling one stop on the bus costs 30p, how far can they each travel to Swindon before they have to exit the bus and walk the rest of the way?"), and so on!
Of course the series goes into broad (but hilarious) 'off the wall' territory with its inclusion of episodes on ghosts and so on, but the style is so specific and detailed that I still get that nostalgic feeling from watching. Here's a representative episode, on Sulphur!
The UK disc that I have also includes some wonderful menu screens, and extras including some very lovingly detailed versions of Ceefax pages (the UK's forerunner of digital television interactivity). These 'Ceefax pages' features could become wonderfully nostalgic in their own right now that the serivce is being shut down with the digitial switchover. Even if bizarrely some people seem to be archiving them along with the test cards and the muzak played over them on YouTube!
I've just picked up the second series on DVD. This one is quite a bit different from the first, most notably in that it is now six half hour episodes rather than ten minute ones. This time around instead of dryly lecturing Programmes for Schools, Look Around You tackles a Tomorrow's World-styled primetime science magazine show. I found on re-watching the series that despite the initial disappointment of it not being an expanded version of the ten minute series and the way that the material felt uncomfortably stretched to fill the half hour form (though that itself captures some of the time-filling crap sections that Tomorrow's World was full of!), that the show still had a lot of fun elements, from the latest surgical robot from China "Med-i-Bot!" to the shock appearance of Prince Charles giving out prizes in the final 'live' episode, along with bizarre running gags about Tony Curtis! It also has that unique-to-the-BBC sense of patronising all-inclusiveness (with regular plugging of other BBC products), along with the spot on uncomfortable faux-friendly relationships between the presenters! Here's a representative section from the second series, and here are a few sceencaptures. I particularly like that the optional subtitles are done in the style of BBC Teletext ones:
There are also a huge number of well known British comedy performers turning up in tiny parts throughout both the series: Matt Lucas and David Walliams (Little Britain); David Mitchell; Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost; Benedict Wong (who is perhaps better known from dramatic roles in Danny Boyle's Sunshine and Moon); Harry Enfield; Adam Buxton; Mark Heap (probably best known for playing the creepiest characters in The Day Today, Brass Eye and Jam - his role here is similar!), Kevin Eldon (Brass Eye, Jam and Dead Set) and many others. I've been a little underwhelmed by Peter Serafinowicz's work apart from this (he turned up as the flatmate in Shaun of the Dead and then got his own sketch show on primetime BBC which unfortunately wasn't that great), but Look Around You which was co-written with Robert Popper is a real standout, especially the first series.
