Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2801 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-10-13
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 80 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Look Around You is a spoof science programme that hilariously recreates both the drab, depressing air of 1970s educational television and a bygone world of tedious school science lessons. Each of the 10-minute episodes--or "Modules"--takes the form of a number of surreal and pointless experiments based on a chosen theme ranging from "Water" and "Sulphur" to "Ghosts" and "Brains".

Look Around You's humour lies not only in an absurd take on education and the impenetrable jargon of science, but also in evoking a sense of nostalgia in the viewer. In this respect the series is helped immeasurably by faultless production and attention to detail. Narrated in austere, Queen's English, using precise scientific terminology, this is a world of scratched film inserts, dubious periodic tables, cheap, synthesised music, giant hairstyles, bulky, teak-finished technology and a proliferation of DYMO labels. Each show is even prefaced by a few seconds of the "Television for Schools & Colleges" countdown clock. The tutorial format of the series is not without its problems though--it is essentially a single, plotless joke stretched to eight episodes, and there are no characters to speak of, save glimpses of the deadpan and much-maligned lab-technician (cowriter Peter Serafanowicz). Despite these shortcomings Look Around You is still a refreshingly different comedy, which is so well put together that you can almost smell the Bunsen burners while you watch.

On the DVD: Look Around You on disc comes with a sizeable and appropriately bizarre selection of extras. The superb animated menus are designed to mimic the arcane, pastel-coloured diagrams found in any well-thumbed science textbook, and even feature the background noise of what is presumably a white-coated technician shuffling around the lab. The Additional Features include the double-length "Calcium" episode, a full-length music video of the song created in the "Music" module (the surprisingly catchy "Little Mouse" by Jack Morgan, BSc), a selection of spoof pages from Ceefax and the Test Card. The different sound modes allow you to watch with or without the narration, subtitles or an entertaining commentary from the programme makers. --Paul Philpott

DVD Description
A new direction in televisual nostalgia for the seventies and eighties - a quirky spoof science series reminiscent of schools education and Open University programming.

Special Features

• Photo gallery
  
• Advanced double length module: Calcium
  
• Little Mouse - full-length pop video
  
• Programme-makers' commentary
  
• Little Mouse commentary by Jack Morgan (BSc)
  
• Pages from Ceefax
  
• Play-at-home quiz pages
  
• Additional music by Gelg
  
• Test card
  
• Reversible sleeve

Customer Reviews

Thank God I'm not the only one!
I watched Look Around You when it was on television 2 years ago, and tried in vain to get others interested in it, but the concept of "funny Open University" was just a little too weird for most of my friends.

And that's about all I can say about it: it's funny Open University. It captures exactly the tone, the process, the genre of programming for schools that I remember (avoiding) as a child and teenager. And yet, it's incredibly funny, without going "hey, look at the stupid people with their hair and clothes of the 70s" that this type of comedy usually reverts to. The comedy comes from the both the set pieces and the reverence it is obviously paying to the original programming.

The DVD itself is very good, with nice extras including the Little Mouse video in its entirety, but its the commentary that gets me every time. Listening to the commentary makes me want to hear the original soundtrack and listening to the soundtrack makes me want to hear the commentary. It's a nice vicious circle.

Write that down.
Humour is a very subjective thing; I, for instance, do not find "The Office" at all funny. Whether anyone reading this will find "Look Around You" as funny as I do I can't say, but I think it's one of the finest things ever to have been broadcast, for what it is - eight ten-minute programmes. Peter Serafinowicz takes his ludicrous "experiments" absolutely seriously, and Nigel Lester's commentary similarly betrays not the slightest sign that he is reading out a spoof - even when he has to say things like "The gas was allowed to mafipulate through the water for five minutes." The programmes perfectly capture the style of those dreary Schools Programmes on science we saw in the late 70s and early 80s, and - if you didn't pay close attention - you might almost believe it was for real. Until you notice the ants building the igloo, that is. "Thanks, ants," as Nigel Lester says, politely. "Thants."

The DVD is very well presented, and allows the usual writers' and director's commentary as an alternative to the original soundtrack. From this I learned how the show was first conceived: Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz produced a one-off parody programme on "Calcium" basically to amuse themselves, and the BBC eventually took it up and commissioned the series we have now enjoyed. "Calcium" is included on the DVD; the interrogation of "intelligent calcium" is perhaps the highlight, though there are many other things to cherish. You also get a series of mock "Pages from CEEFAX", with news, farming, financial and sport reports which combine realism and madness very much as the programmes do; a quiz for what you have learned from each episode, with suitable punishments should you do badly; and a parody test card ending with a few seconds of animation from a cartoon that I wish went on for a whole five minutes. Until we see a complete edition of "The Hexagons", though, I just have to repeat their names - Moffaty, Gideon, Vincent, Slingsby and Wilson - to make myself laugh.

Highly recommended.

Quite frankly, a work of genius
I'd seen glimpes of this weird little series when it was originally broadcast in 2002, but only when getting ready to go out so I never really paid much attention. However, after becoming hooked to series 2 on the BBC in 2005, I looked up for any DVDs of the show and found this series available. It is very different in style and execution to the later series, but the wickedly strange humour remains the same.

Of particular note, the full music video version of "Little Mouse" in the DVD extras is, quite frankly, a work of genius.