Look Around You

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BBC Two (ended 2005)
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Show Summary

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Welcome to the Look Around You guide at TV.com.

Look around you. Look around you. Just look around you. What do you see? A tree. A weather-vane. A discarded lollipop-wrapper. A traffic shop. All of these things, and any other things you may care to mention, have one thing in common. Can you work out what it is? CORRECT! The answer is Science.

The first series of this British comedy show, filmed in 2002, was a send-up of the earnest BBC programmes for schools made in the 1960s and 1970s. The second series (2005) is a friendlier spoof of the BBC's own slightly wacky Tomorrow's World programme (1965-2002), and it gives a view from somewhere around 1982 of what life might be like in the early 21st century.

The new series is again written by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz and consists of six thirty-minute shows, a big improvement on the ten-minute format of the first series. The new episodes are all wonderfully daft...

Remember to have your pencils and your copy books handy!moreless
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S 1 :  Ep 1 Aired 1/1/07

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Fan Reviews (5)

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  • Great first season, ok second season

    10
    "Perfect"
    By AmpDivorax, Aug 11, 2010
    The part of the series that most people are major fans of are the first season and rightfully so. It serves as one of the best parodies of 70s educational films that were shown in the UK. The second season serves mainly as a parody of the BBC show Tomorrow's World and does a pretty good job at it. The reality is though that the change to that parody did not work as well and to some extent the creators have admitted this as well. Overall the first season is definitely recommended and the second season is not too bad.moreless

  • Watch the first series, avoid the second.

    4.0
    "Poor"
    By garnsr, Feb 24, 2009
    The first series was great, a faux-instructional series about science that you needed to pay attention to (and actually know a little bit about science) to notice when there was a joke. It was very British, and a great way to waste what always seemed like a very brief 12 or so minutes. But for the second series they tossed away pretty much everything that was good about the first series, and turned it into an incredibly boring, not at all funny mess of a different type of British show. It's no wonder the show only got through a handful if episodes in the second series. But the first is great stuff.moreless

  • The First Series was Amazing then it got to the second series and there was the reason for it being cancelled

    7.7
    "Good"
    By timbellion1, Mar 22, 2007
    The show was about giving false information about chemicals and general scientific information in a very serious and believable manner, which in the first series worked to a tee, actually seemed like a proper documentary for schools, but then for the second series they lost all that originality with professional presenters/actors etc. didn't fit the style of the programme, which made the show just boring and was the start of the downfall of the programme.
    If they ever revived it they best keep it how it was originally, sending all the people use to watching those science documentaries at school, down memory lane..moreless

  • Absolutely brilliant, especially the second season!

    9.4
    "Superb"
    By staceyw_duckula, Jan 22, 2007
    Usually within my family I'm not the first one to have seen my favourite comedy programmes. It was always my sisters' laughter that get me sucked in. In this case, one of my sisters actually showed me Look Around You. There were only two seasons of Look Around You, but both were completely different. The first was a parody of educational science programmes back in the 70's, so much of a parody in fact that they've taken on everything from emulating the filming style to the use of the old countdown devices that were once used by the BBC and ITV. The second series on the other hand parodied 80's educational gadget shows.

    Obviously the first season had a science theme overall, therefore each episodes had at least one spoof 'experiment' - example of these included exposing sulpher to champagne and cultivating germs from a moth - which often leads to hilariously daft results, like the growth of an apple tree in a petri dish and an electric bolt causing a pair of scissors to appear in the sky. Each episode also started off with footage that was almost unrelated to the theme of the episode, one of which was named Water but started off with footage of a woman baking an apple pie. However, Look Around You gets much better from the second season. Never have I laughed so hard at such daft and surreal aspects such as 'The Vegetable Orchestra', which is just shots of vegetables set to classical music, and how they parody old BBC footage as a 'filler' for when the episodes intentionally go horribly wrong! Like the first season, season 2 often carries out experiments with the hottest things in modern technology such as a computer made entirely for women, Medibot, the world's first robot surgeon, and a chemical that can make an athlete run from London to Edinburgh in just five minutes. Look Around You is just pure genius. I don't how anyone could not at least give a giggle at it all. Of course, being a British show there are probably many jokes in the series that people from overseas might not get, but I guarantee that you'll be in fits when you get round to the second season!moreless

  • spoof of 1970s science documentaries and 1980s gadget tv shows

    9.7
    "Superb"
    By maltinej, Sep 17, 2006
    super funny... short and sweet! season 1's science documentary style is plain awesome... perfect! reallyfunny and unexpected.... season 2 is a different kind of funny making fun of 1980's style gadget shows like thats incredible... still funny but different... season 1 is my favorite....

    season 1 is so good because you almost never see the actors faces; and actually what happens "behind the scenes" is as funny as what is going on on-screen. like in one episode, the main "scientist" in making one of his experiments (which all start out with the narrator stating "An experiment was carried out..." in a very fine british accent) burns his hand after using his unprotected hand to take out an egg out of a container filled with boiling water... 3 times in a row. later on you see the scientist wearing black gloves to cover up his burnt hands.... details like these warrant more than 1 viewing of each episode.

    season 2 is more of a tv show style spoof, with the actors talking more but still sounding very serious while at the same time not realizing how stupid what is going on around them or what they are saying is. many references to 1980s technology and how ridiculous and outdated they are today 20 years later.

    all in all a different pace but very well made seriesmoreless
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Comedy, Science Fiction

Themes

alternate history, campy, cheap special effects, fake reality, news anchor hijinks

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