Look Around You

After my last two posts about the Chicken Hawk in Chief and the video from The Hermit and after reading this post by my blog bud FranIam, I thought my head was going to explode in a sea of Bush induced negativity. So I stopped reading blogs and news websites for a bit and I headed over to You Tube to look for things that would make me laugh.


After looking at bits of clips from The Young Ones (I'm not sure why because I have the series on DVD) I decided to see if they had any clips from one of my favorite BBC comedies of all time, Look Around You and wouldn't you know it, they did!
If you're not familiar with this little gem of a comedy then please allow me to fill you in. It's a parody of those futurism type of shows they used to run in the late 70's/early 80's where they'd speculate about what life was going to be like in the year 2000 and beyond. Of course those old shows were painfully off the mark but at the time I remember watching them and thinking, "Wow, cool!" The humor in this show is dry as Death Valley in the middle of summer and it's as deadpan as any Christopher Guest mockumentary ever was. It stars Peter Serafinowicz (he's the guy on the left), who also co-wrote the show, Olivia Coleman (she's the woman on the far left), Josie D'Arby (she's the black gal), and Robert Popper (the guy on the far right), who also co-wrote the show with Serafinowicz. The show also had guest stars such as Paul Putner, Harry Enfield, Sarah Alexander, David Walliams, and others you'll recognize if you watch as many BBC comedies as I do. The costumes, the music, and the acting are all spot on.

I've never seen the first series they did of this show but maybe one day BBC America will run it again and I'll get to see it too. I have to admit though when I saw the first episode of this the second series I thought, "Man this show is stupid." But then it hit me that it's supposed to be stupid and it's a feckin' parody and then I saw what a genius creation it was. I watched all the episodes they ran on BBC America and it looks like between that and watching clips on You Tube will have to do me because the DVD is not available in this country.

Here's a ten minute clip from the first episode of the second series that makes me howl with laughter, I love Josie D'Arby's hair and hat, Harry Enfield as the ghost of Tchaikovsky, and of course all three of the musical performances:



Some other great clips feature the insanely funny clip about the food of the future which is casseroles, Psilence, this three parter about computers (part 1, part 2, part 3), and since you got to have something to do with those computers, here's a clip about computer games! The line about waggling your joystick to create more foam kills me!

There's more clips on You Tube (for now anyway) so go check them out if you like. Maybe the boy and girls at the Beeb will release both series of Look Around You here in North America. Until they do I recommend that you LOOK AROUND YOU!