21 and 60 for Einsteinium…
The ages at which he gained Swiss and American citizenship? Or am I going too far with all this?
“Make sure you look out for the release of the new albumen! It’s out now!” 
Never quit, British people. Never, ever let them stop you.
It’s entirely possible (if those figures are true) - the creators of Look Around You are very crafty and subtle.
Lt (Light) has 60 - 40 (presumably bulb wattages)
Ng (Nothing) has 0 -0
Mu (Music) has 4 - 4 (time)
Jz (Jazz) has 5 - 4 (time)
fAu (Fools Gold) has the same as Gold, but with exclamation marks
Xm (Christmas) has 25 -12
One thing that’s probably going to be flying over the heads of most non-Brits (and in fact Brits under the age of 25 or so) is that there really were programmes for schools and colleges just like this in the 70s and 80s - of course they weren’t silly like this, but the style of presentation - to voiceover, the question and answer style of presentation, even the background music and the little countdown clock at the beginning, is almost exactly the same.
Compare, for example this:
and
(the second of those is a rather poor quality recording)
Speaking as a non-Brit, I immediately identified the subject matter being spoofed, in general if not specifically. This type of solemn, pedantic educational science film was commonplace in the United States when I was in school. For me, this was right around the time when VCRs were coming into their own, so I got the trifecta: videotapes with horribly ostentatious proto-digital effects, venerable 16mm films with bBaAdD sSoOuUnNdD, and occasionally even
<BEEP>
<KchNK>
filmstrips.
In fairness, sometimes I happen to catch a glimpse of the so-called ‘educational’ programming on TV these days, and I wonder how today’s kids are able to absorb any information from them, or even keep from having seizures, what with all the pointless CGI and fast edits and whatnot.
Yeah, Look Around You is a perfect parody of “Programmes for Schools” that we watched as a kid. It was kind of cool - the teacher would flip the TV on at 11:23 or some bizarre time like that, and we’d watch some frocked git set fire to a block of salt. When I came to America I was surprised that there wasn’t a telly in every classroom… and when they did get them, they came with commercials :rolleyes: . Remember Channel 1?
The second season was a pisstake of Tomorrow’s World, which was a technology show hosted by youngish presenters (ah, Maggie Philbin!). It is done so incredibly well. My favorite episode is the one on music, where they even include a parody of the Top of the Pops countdown.
It used to be shown on BBC America, but dolts that they are, it’s no longer on. They just show re-runs of Coupling, quite possibly the worst show to ever air :mad: .
Coupling can be salvaged by muting the sound and doing some reading while Sarah Alexander isn’t on. Then, pay attention again when she is on. Admittedly this makes the plots incomprehensible most of the time — but I’m not fussy about those details.
Incidentally, according to Wikipedia Sarah Alexander is the beloved of Peter Serafinowicz, one of the actors and writers in Look Around You — and you can’t tell me that’s just a coincidence, Mr. Coupling Hater. She also appeared in some episodes, and sang some vocals.
Write that down in your copybook, now.
We had very similar “educational” videos here, the chief difference being in the narrators’ accent. Here is an example:
That’s a spoof too. My wife and I made it last year for a local short-film festival with a theme of “politically incorrect holidays.”
While we’re talking about educational programmes , how about the early Open University broadcasts ? I haven’t been able to find an actual clip on YouTube, but what I have found is this Fry and Laurie spoof . And yes, the lecturers did used to dress like that.
The second series certainly had plenty of good moments, but I think they tried just a little too hard to be silly - you couldn’t watch it for any length of time and be in any doubt that you were watching a comedy show - whereas the first series bubbled away being subtly wrong throughout, but at a threshold level you could easily overlook if you were not quite paying attention.
Hey! I loved Coupling up until the fourth season!
Anyhow, here in Chicago when Channel 20 first hit the air in the mid-80s, there was a lot of this style of educational program. They had some kind of series for the City Colleges of Chicago, complete with the same sort of space-age analog synth music intros, early 80s computer graphics, workbooks to follow along at home with, etc. I particularly remember one on algebra and another on accounting. Can’t for the life of me think of what any of these were called, nor do I remember whether they were specific to Chicago or not.
I actually showed one of those old educational films to a class of American students, just last year. I think they’re pretty much universal.
I have the DVD of the first series of Look Around You - the case insert is reversible - by default it looks like this, but if you remove it and insert it the other way, the DVD case looks like the (fake) textbook you see in the intro to every program (here: BBC - Look Around You - Textbook by E. W. Whitmarsh )
I recommend taking a look at some of the other episodes that are watchable on Youtube - the ones on iron and sulphur are especially good.
If you like Look Around You, I highly recommend Mark Erickson’s brilliant how-to series, Infinite Solutions. He has such useful tips as:
[ul]
[li]How to recharge batteries[/li][li]How to increase your Wi-Fi signal[/li][li]How to find dinosaur bones, and my personal favorite[/li][li]How to visit NYC on $100[/li][/ul]
Nice. You know, it’s at times like this you really notice what a bunch of morons are posting comments on Youtube - falling over themselves to cry “totally fake!”
Holy crap! There’s a BBC Micro in the intro!
We got shown a whole series of sex education programmes produced in this manner. Very very bizarre, especially when they got to the footage of a real birth.