History Series / LookAroundYou

* MultiEthnicName: 'Sport' has an extremely Scottish news correspondent named Mario Abdullah-Levy.

-> ''"Jean is shorter than Brutus, but taller than [[AerithAndBob Imhotep.]] [[LogicBomb 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 [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCustomaryMeasurements nautical mile]] away from Lord Scotland, how tall is Imhotep?"[[labelnote:The answer:]]Imhotep is invisible.[[/labelnote]]''

This British comedy series, which originally aired on [[Creator/TheBBC BBC Two]] from 2002–05 (and later rerun in the US by Creator/AdultSwim), is an AffectionateParody of educational programming such as ''Television for Schools'' in series 1, and later a {{Mockumentary}} in the style of ''Tomorrow's World''. The series mimics perfectly the style of British programming in the 1970s, right down to using authentic period cameras and effects. The "science" seen in the series bears no resemblance whatsoever to that of the real world (mixing sulphur with champagne gives sulphagne, and it gives you powerful EyeBeams if you drink it; passing nitrogen gas through mains water produces whisky, and iron was invented in the 18th century by a cyclops named "Lord Iron de Haviland"), but, nevertheless, the spot-on parodies of educational programming and "almost-correct" science means the writers have ShownTheirWork.

The BBC have recently added old clips of ''[[Series/TomorrowsWorld Tomorrow's World]]'' to their [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/index.shtml website]]. However, they've [[BlatantLies hidden ''Look Around You'' episodes with it]]. Can you guess which ones are which?

The second series was almost a [[GenreShift total change]] from the first -- the 10 minute episodes became 30, the action moved from lab to studio, and the faceless voiceover was replaced by presenters delivering parodic WittyBanter.

After 8 unbearable years of NoExportForYou, as of July 20th, 2010, the BBC have '''finally''' released a Region 1 DVD set of the first series.

* AerithAndBob: Helen, Rosy and Partario.

* AscendedExtra: Jack Morgan was a one-shot character for Series 1, but was brought back for Series 2 as a main character.
* AssShove: In "Germs", Professor Clifford Miles has his temperature taken as part of an experiment on the spread of germs. We see him pull down his pants, bend over, and the scientist approaches from behind with a thermometer and flips up his coattail, before we see a close-up of his wincing face.

* BeneficialDisease: There's the disease geodermic granititis, called "Cobbles", which causes the skin to take on the appearance of stone until the victim looks like a pile of rocks. A scientist who discovered a cure for the disease, a sufferer himself, opted not to use it because Cobbles enables the sufferer to fly, which he enjoyed.

* BlackHumor: Much of the humor derives from the narration blithely ignoring the detrimental effects of the experiments on the subjects (for instance, the boiled-egg experiment, where the subject retrieves the eggs from the boiling water with an increasingly burned hand).

** In the last episode of Series 2, HRH Sir Prince Charles ends up looking faceless after Leonard Hatred sprays him with his "Psilence" liquid skin. (It's not explained how His Royal Highness is able to breathe after this happens, but he seems to manage.)

* BloodSport: "Stabbing" and "Mixed Stabbing" are among the newer Olympic disciplines.

* BoringBroadcaster: The show is an AffectionateParody of the educational programming aired during the daytime by the Creator/{{BBC}} and Creator/{{ITV}} until the early 1990's (intended to be watched live at school before the advent of the VCR), right down to the 1970's production values.

** A RunningGag features the narrator repeating a courtesy in the form of a portmanteau. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrryML0XVuY "Thanks, ants. Thants."]]
** Anti-Cobbles cream contains cream, potassium, nitrates, potassium nitrates, and nitrate of potassium nitrate.
** The "Iron" episode features a model of an iron molecule, and a model of a model of an iron molecule, modelled in iron.

* CurseCutShort: In the outro to the "Music" episode, the fuse of a bunch of dynamite burns down. Just as it's about to hit the dynamite (with a [[TooDumbToLive scientist staring intently at it from about a foot away]]), the credits finish.

* DressesTheSame: One of the "Maths" exercises is to compute the probability of this happening. [[spoiler:The party gets canceled.]]

* DroneOfDread: One plays in the Calcium episode when the narrator mentions starving to death, showing gravestones.

* DVDCommentary: Parodied by having Jack Morgan commenting on the "Little Mouse" video. [[invoked]]
* EducationalShort: The genre parodies classroom educational shorts.

* EvenTheGuysWantHim: Jack Morgan, according to Peter Packard in the Health episode.

** One test subject, Len Pounds, becomes able to fire lasers from his eyes after 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.) The beams cause whatever they hit to vanish if focused on for long enough, though this does take some time, so when Pounds tries using the beams to kill the scientist, this leaves him open to having the beam reflected back at him with a mirror... or simply getting shot dead with a gun.

** The second series also features geodermic granititis, or Cobbles, a disease that literally reduces its victims into piles of rock, but "it's not all bad - at least you can fly".
* ForeignQueasine: The "Germs" episode reveals that apparently, in the world of ''Look Around You", dead moths are a popular sandwich topping.
* FunWithAcronyms: "Maths" sands for "[[RecursiveAcronym Mathematical]] Anti-Telharsic Harfatum Septomin".
* FunWithSubtitles: In the last episode, Pam and Peter's names are switched when initially shown, and was quickly corrected. Later, when Simon Teigh's invention was shown, his name was briefly displayed as "Caption".

* HappyBirthdayToYou: Sung at the end of the "Food" episode, with additional lyrics.

* HollywoodMagnetism: In the episode "Sulfur", they test to see whether sulfur has any magnetic properties. So they use a sheet of paper to "shield" the sulfur from the magnet until everything is in place.
* ImColdSoCold: The pilot uses this trope in the conversation with intelligent calcium, where the aforementioned substance answers the scientist's question of "how do you feel?" with "cold". The scientist then forces the obvious conclusion by capping the test tube, suffocating the intelligent calcium inside.
* ImmediateSelfContradiction: In one of the math questions, Jean is said to be taller than Imhotep. This is immediately followed by Imhotep being described as taller than Jean.
* IncrediblyLamePun: During the "Iron" episode's electricity experiment: "We're using Music/{{ACDC}} because it's heavy metal."
** In the "Maths" episode, the narrator says a pencil bag should contain "a pair of compasses". Cue the scientist pulling two (navigational) compasses out of a pencil bag.
** In the "Water" episode, while boiling eggs: "Make sure you look out for the release of the new albumen. It's out now."
** "Germs originated in UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}".

** "This is a starling. It's migrated all the way from Russia" (a map points to "Starlingrad")

* ItaliansTalkWithHands: In the "OnTheNext" segment of the "Sulphur" episode, the subject of the next episode is said to be Italians. The subject is shown to be talking while gesticulating with his hands.
* ItWillNeverCatchOn: Peter's reaction to "Rap" music.

* MultiEthnicName: "Sport" has an extremely Scottish news correspondent named Mario Abdullah-Levy.

* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Leonard Hatred seems to have some issues.

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

* OneSteveLimit: Averted in the second series' "Music", which features three contestants named Tony, Toni, and Antony.
* OnTheNext: Each episode of the first series ends with a clip from what is supposedly the next episode, even though no such episode exists, and each clip generally ends with some sort of mistake (a scientist standing next to a lit stick of dynamite, or confusing flowers with flours)

* 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", "fool's gold", "music", "toronto", "jazz", "[[Creator/VerityLambert lambert]]" and "hello". It can also be seen on the season 1 DVD if you squint.
* 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", "St. Thomas' oil"), 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).

** "[[SenselessSacrifice Bless you, ants]]. -{{beat}}- Blants."
** Also subverted somewhat in the last episode. "Thanks Hanks -{{beat}}- Thanks."

** 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.
** In a season 2 episode, Tchaikovsky's ghost judges a music contest.
* RealityIsOutToLunch: Running electricity through a metal pyramid causes scissors to appear in the sky. Some people can fly just by thinking about it (others fly due to a skin disease that turns your skin into rocks). Drinking a mixture of champagne and sulfur gives you EyeBeams, while caramel-flavored rocket fuel lets you run from Nottingham to Aberdeen in less than five minutes, at the cost of shrinking you down. His Royal Highness Prince Charles can control hurricanes. All of this is considered perfectly normal.
* {{Retraux}}: Designed to mimic, right down to the means of the production, the educational/science programs of the 1970's and '80s on British television, despite being filmed in the '00s.

** Every episode of season two has the Inventor of the Year award, with a close-up of a magnificent trophy to be presented by His Royal Highness Prince Charles.
* 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: Series 1 parodies the science programmes that you might be shown in school. The format has the narrator alternate between explaining the episode's topic and demonstrating relevant science experiments. However, most of the science is completely bogus and made up, in ways that range from subtle to BlatantLies.
* ShoutOut: At the beginning of Music, the bottles' embossing tape read the following: [[ThePowerOfRock Rock]], [[HeavyMetal Metal]], Music/EarthWindAndFire.

* StealthPun: In the "Sport" episode, a list of a list of new Olympic sports begins with Bomerang, and also ends with Boomerang. [[spoiler:Boomerang comes back.]]

** At one point, sulphur and champagne are mixed to make 'sulphagne'. [[note]] Sulphane is another name for hydrogen sulphide. [[/note]]
** The "St Frankenstein's Day" programme listings in the second series mention something called ''The Honey Programme'', which apparently has something to do with bees but will include as a guest the unnamed lead singer of Music/ThePolice. [[spoiler:Better known as ''Music/{{Sting}}''.]]
* 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.

** Before the [[BrownNote "boite diabolique"]] is played in "Music", the volume on the TV is muted.
** In "Sports", a new football is invented which is 250 times rounder than a sphere. For legal reasons, it's not allowed to be shown on-screen, so it's hidden behind a curtain.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Fantastic phenomena, such as ghosts and flight, are at most treated as mildly interesting. The sulphagne experiment, which gives a man EyeBeams, is described similarly to how one would explain a vinegar and baking soda volcano to a child.

* 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."

This British comedy series, which originally aired on [[Creator/TheBBC BBC Two]] from 2002–05, is an AffectionateParody of educational programming such as ''Television for Schools'' in series 1, and later a {{Mockumentary}} in the style of ''Tomorrow's World''. The series mimics perfectly the style of British programming in the 1970s, right down to using authentic period cameras and effects. The "science" seen in the series bears no resemblance whatsoever to that of the real world (mixing sulphur with champagne gives sulphagne, and it gives you powerful EyeBeams if you drink it; passing nitrogen gas through mains water produces whisky, and iron was invented in the 18th century by a cyclops named "Lord Iron de Haviland"), but, nevertheless, the spot-on parodies of educational programming and "almost-correct" science means the writers have ShownTheirWork.

* {{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".

%%* {{Otaku}}: Synthesizer Patel.

%%* RhymesOnADime

%%* ScienceShow: What Series 1 was parodying.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: The aforementioned flight and EyeBeams, as well as other activities that are treated as mundane, such as experimenting on ghosts.

* EenieMeenieMinyMoai: Imhotep is portrayed as a moai head.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: "Man has been using iron since the Stone Age." Is this just another ImmediateSelfContradiction and AnachronismStew-based gag the show regular deals in? No, its counter-intuitively true. The Iron Age marks the point at which people could ''produce iron from ore in economically useful quantities.'' Long before then people were using small, precious amounts of it that they [[AwesomeButImpractical smelted by very painstaking methods]] or happened to find in naturally pure forms like ThunderboltIron.

* DVDCommentary: Parodied by having Jack Morgan commenting on the "Little Mouse" video.

* WidgetSeries: The series as a whole is quite strange and rather British.
* YeOldeButcheredEnglish: "Water, water: what hast thou dunst?"

---> Thanks, Wiki/TVTropes. Thopes.

* BilingualBonus: The Garry gum has a side effect of causing diarrhea. "Geri", which sounds identical to "Garry", is Japanese for "diarrhea."

* AluminumChristmasTrees: "Man has been using iron since the Stone Age." Is this just another AnachronismStew-based gag the show regular deals in? No, its counter-intuitively true. The Iron Age marks the point at which people could ''produce iron from ore in economically useful quantities.'' Long before then people were using small, precious amounts of it that they [[AwesomeButImpractical smelted by very painstaking methods]] or happened to find in naturally pure forms like ThunderboltIron.

* AnachronismStew: "Man has been using iron since the Stone Age." [[AluminumChristmasTrees Note that this is, counter-intuitively, true.]] The Iron Age marks the point at which people could ''produce iron from ore in economically useful quantities.'' Long before then people were using small, precious amounts of it that they [[AwesomeButImpractical smelted by very painstaking methods]] or happened to find in naturally pure forms like ThunderboltIron.

* DVDCommentary: Parodied by having Jack Morgan commenting on the "Little Mouse" video

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

This British comedy series, which originally aired on [[Creator/TheBBC BBC Two]] from 2002–05, is an AffectionateParody of educational programming such as ''Television for Schools'' in series 1, and later a {{Mockumentary}} in the style of ''Tomorrow's World''. The series mimics perfectly the style of British programming in the 1970s, right down to using authentic period cameras and effects. The "science" seen in the series bears no resemblance to that of the real world (mixing sulphur with champagne gives sulphagne, and it gives you powerful EyeBeams if you drink it; passing nitrogen gas through mains water produces whisky, and iron was invented in the 18th century by a cyclops named "Lord Iron de Haviland"), but, nevertheless, the spot-on parodies of educational programming and "almost-correct" science means the writers have ShownTheirWork.