History Series / LookAroundYou

%%* AndIMustScream: The Helvetica Scenario.

* PerfectlyCromulentWord: The show regularly throws out convincing but completely made-up scientific jargon, particularly in the first series which has several per episode. Included are fictitious chemicals ("bumcivilian", "segnomin"), laboratory equipment ("Besselheim plate", "gribbin"), units of measurement ("billigrams", "quorums per second") and many more. The "Iron" episode includes a "Ravenscroft pan", which may be a concealed ShoutOut to the well-known BBC DJ John Peel (real name John Ravenscroft).

* PostModernMagik: The Halloween episode Ghosts considered the science of ghosts, such as what would happen if a roll of Sellotape was possessed, or how effective a lab partner ghosts were.

* ShrinkingViolet: Toni Baxter, a Music 2000 contestant.

* BlatantLies: Do not trust Look Around You as a source of reliable information of any kind.

---> Thanks, TVTropes. Thopes.

* BeneficialDisease: There's a disease called "Cobbles", which causes the skin to take on the appearance of stone until the victim looks like a pile of rocks, but also grants the ability to fly. The scientist who discovered a cure for the disease, a sufferer himself, opted not to use it because he liked being able to fly so much.

** The second series also features Cobbles, a disease that literally reduces its victims into piles of rock, but "it's not all bad - at least you can fly".

* NoLastNameGiven: Patricia [==] from the second series' "Computers" episode is a subversion. She has a surname but it's silent.

* AerithAndBob: Helen, Rosie and Partario.

* YouLookFamiliar: Computer Jones previously appeared as the Ghost of Tchaikovsky's attendant.

* BonusEpisode: A bonus, double-length episode about calcium (the unaired pilot) is included with the DVD of the first series.

* GlassShatteringSound: High-pitched tones cans break glass. Low-pitched tones can reconstruct it.

* PerfectlyCromulentWord: The show regularly throws out convincing but completely made-up scientific jargon, particularly in the first series which has several per episode. Included are fictitious chemicals ("bumcivilian", "segnomin"), laboratory equipment ("Besselheim plate", "gribbin"), units of measurement ("billigrams", "quorums per second") and many more.

* In "Brain" we see that even a vegetable like a pea has a brain of its own. [[spoiler:In the DVD AudioCommentary Popper and Serafinowicz express their pride at having managed to resist the temptation to use the phrase "pea brain".]]

* BrownNote: The ''boîte diabolique'', a keyboard which plays notes that humanity was not meant to hear.

* FutureBadass: Pam meets her future self as a birthday present. ([[FutureMeScaresMe Shockingly]], she is unsurprised, even when she finds out what her life will be like.}

* OnceAnEpisode: Every episode of the first series included the "copybook clip", showing an amusingly intent-looking schoolboy (played by an adult) with a ''Look Around You'' textbook.

** The ridiculous {{Portmanteau}}s lasted the entire run. The first series also had the opening sequences in which clips of stock footage that clearly did not indicate today's topic would be played while the narrator intoned "Look around you... can you tell what you are looking for? Correct. It's [BIZARRE TOPIC]."

** In the episode about iron a scientist demonstrates the use of it in handcuffs by snapping on a pair. In a later experiment, the handcuffs are still worn albeit with the chain cut.

----

* BonusEpisode: a bonus, double-length episode about calcium (the unaired pilot) is included with the DVD of the first series.

* CreditsGag: false continuity announcements are run over the ending credits, and some episodes are prefaced by fake adverts listing the line-up for "St. Franchise/{{Frankenstein}}'s Day" and "Antmas Eve".

* DVDBonusContent: the bonus content includes a quiz with incorrect answers, a badly scrambled [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax Ceefax]] page, and authentic captioning, in the style of 1980s Ceefax subtitles.
* DVDCommentary: parodied by having Jack Morgan commenting on the "Little Mouse" video

* ExpoLabel: old-style red [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embossing_tape laboratory labels]] on ''absolutely everything'' in the first series.

* EyeBeams: one test subject gains them by ingesting a mixture of champagne and powdered sulphur, or "sulphagne." (''Sulfane'' is another word for hydrogen sulfide, a hideously poisonous gas that also gives rotten eggs their stench.)

* {{Flight}}: the series takes for granted that some people can fly, complete with footage of people flying to work accompanied by an entirely matter-of-fact voice-over including the line "if you can fly".

* FutureBadass: Pam meets her future self as a birthday present. ([[FutureMeScaresMe Shockingly]], she is unsurprised, even when she finds out what her life will be like.

* HeyItsThatGuy: Keep an eye out for Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in bit parts.
** EdgarWright can be seen as a lab assistant in some episodes.

* LittleKnownFacts: the entire point of the series.

* ObituaryMontage: parodied with a voiceover at the end of the episode stating "viewers distressed at the death of Clive Pounds, who died during production of this programme, may be pleased to hear that he has since come back to life."

* OnceAnEpisode: Every episode of the first series included the "copybook clip", showing an amusingly intent-looking schoolboy (played by an adult) with a Series/LookAroundYou textbook.

* OnTheNext: each episode of the first series ended with a clip from what was supposedly the next episode, even though no such episode existed, and each clip generally ended with some sort of mistake (a scientist standing next to a lit stick of dynamite, or confusing flowers with flours)

* PerfectlyCromulentWord: the show regularly throws out convincing but completely made-up scientific jargon, particularly in the first series which has several per episode. Included are fictitious chemicals ("bumcivilian", "segnomin"), laboratory equipment ("Besselheim plate", "gribbin"), units of measurement ("billigrams", "quorums per second") and many more.

* PostModernMagik: the Hallowe'en episode Ghosts considered the science of ghosts, such as what would happen if a roll of Sellotape was possessed, or how effective a lab partner ghosts were.
* {{Retraux}}: Designed to mimic, right down to the means of the production the educational/science programmes of the 1970s and '80s on British television, despite being filmed in the '00s.

* ScareEmStraight: an example of a new fat loss program includes a horrifying picture supposed to scare people from eating, suppress appetite and even cause fat to ooze from the sweat glands. The episode features a lengthy [[ContentWarnings "send your children out of the room"]] sequence, only for the actual image (a stuffed bear and a model skeleton) to be hilariously tame.
%%* ScienceShow: What season 1 was parodying.

* StockFootage: frequently parodied in the first series (the footage that appeared was bizarre to say the least: a man with no teeth trying to eat a burger, children graffiting calculus onto the walls of a house, and an old lady asking how much 5p scraps of meat cost), while the second series digitally edits stock footage of Prince Charles so he appears to be presenting the Look Around You award.

* YouFailBiologyForever: "Almost all living things have brains. [[StealthPun If we look inside one of these peas, we can see its tiny brain]]."

-> ''"Jean is shorter than Brutus, but taller than [[AerithAndBob Imhotep]]. Imhotep is taller than Jean, but shorter than Lord Scotland. Lord Scotland is twice the height of Jean and Brutus combined, but only one-tenth of the height of Millsy. Millsy is at a constant height of ''x'' − ''y''. If Jean stands exactly one [[AmericanCustomaryMeasurements nautical mile]] away from Lord Scotland, how tall is Imhotep?"[[labelnote:The answer:]]Imhotep is invisible.[[/labelnote]]''

* OnceAnEpisode: Every episode of the first series included the "copybook clip", showing an amusingly intent-looking schoolboy (played by an adult) with a LookAroundYou textbook.

* ShoutOut: At the beginning of Music, the bottles' embossing tape read the following: [[ThePowerOfRock Rock]], [[Music.HeavyMetal Metal]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth,_Wind_%26_Fire Earth, Wind, and Fire]].

* CreditsGag: false continuity announcements are run over the ending credits, and some episodes are prefaced by fake adverts listing the line-up for "St. {{Frankenstein}}'s Day" and "Antmas Eve".

* BakersDozen: a bonus, double-length episode about calcium (the unaired pilot) is included with the DVD of the first series.

%%* {{Retraux}}

* ParodicTableOfTheElements: The entire Periodic Table of the Elements as used on Look Around You is available on the BBC website [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/lookaroundyou/series1/periodic.shtml here]], featuring such elements as "manganesium", "music", "toronto", "jazz", and "hello". It can also be seen on the season 1 DVD if you squint.