3 HN users recommended this comedy video3 months2016–2024score 4
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters recommend it as a surreal, perfectly observed parody of old educational films, and quote it in jokes.
The pilot of the British comedy series Look Around You, a deadpan parody of 1970s and 80s school science programmes, in which the scientists examine calcium.
“a lot of HN readers might love it. It's a surreal but perfectly observed parody” (HN, 2023)
Likely because they first encountered it on PBS, some Americans are unaware Connections was a BBC production: [link] Even less known these days (by Americans, at least) is that Connections was but one of many extraordinary educational science series that the BBC produced in the 1970's. Original footage of one of the best of these was recently rediscovered and finally made available on the web: Look Around You: Season 1 Pilot - Calcium [this video] Watching it again today, it's hard to understate the positive impact this series had on British science education, and the obvious "leg up" it gave for Britain's technological prowess.
Rediscovered BBC-style educational science series pilot
Look Around You [0] is little known even in the UK, but I think a lot of HN readers might love it. It's a surreal but perfectly observed parody of the 80s/90s educational videos we used to watch in school science classes. [0] Episode 1: Calcium [this video]
I really wondered if this would be related to the mockumentary "Look Around You"[1]'s somewhat famous "Thanks ants... Thants"[2] line. If you're reading my comment and you haven't run across these, you might find them pretty amusing. But... it is (reasonably) not related to those things at all. 1 - [this video] 2 - [link]
Parody series with the famous 'Thanks ants... Thants' line
Children's TV nostalgia, eh? Back in the '80s the earliest UK TV in the morning was often a long countdown clock leading into a couple of hours of very slow-paced and somewhat haunted old schools programming [link] [link] . Now that's the stuff of memories. The whole first series/season of the early-2000s TV series Look Around You [link] was a parody of this programming: [this video] .
Look Around You parodies old UK schools programming
This strikes me as a darker version of the late 70s early 80s British educational videos aesthetic captured in the Look Around You series. Example: [this video]
Example of late-70s British educational video aesthetic
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