S04E03

Well, I’ve eaten a goose filled with the Holy Spirit, and now a goat filled with the Holy Spirit… I must be morbidly obese with divine wisdom!

Having firmly established to their new and age-improved audience that the hype was deserved, the show takes a moment to let the familiar take centre stage…

In this episode:

Song: Hey, Hey, We’re the Thinkers — Socrates [Ben], Plato [Jim], Diogenes [Larry] and Aristotle [Mat] warble witty and wise (Parody of: The Monkees, feat. Theme and The Beatles, feat. Help!… with a bit of assistance from MP’s “Upper Class Twit of the Year”)

Recurring sketches:

Dominic Duckworth: HHTV Investigates — Religious Relics (“For a small donation, I’ll let you rub one of Saint Appolonia’s teeth — as knocked out by the Romans, before they burnt ‘er alive!”)

Historical Dentist — Saxon (“I have been trained… We’ll just put this boiled holly leaf into the saucer — now, if you could just yawn for me?” “…were you trained by Dr. Saxon, by any chance?”)

Historical Masterchef — Saxon (“Five munuts!” “Eleven minutes!!” “…You literally never learn, do you?”)

Shouty Man — New! Great Western Railway — “The Victorian Transportation Revolution!” (“It”s not great!” “It is great. Ignore him.” “It isn’t!”)

Horrible Movie Pitch — The King Canute Project (“King Dumb and Queen Dumber! It’s a sequel!”)

One-offs:

Measly Middle Ages

The Crusade is Thataway — Wannabe subject of heroic ballads Emicho of the Rhineland sets out to conquer the Holy Land! and bring back Jerusalem as a prize for his fair lady!… all without a map. And for some reason the Holy Spirit-imbued livestock are no help either. (“Well, I never thought I’d become part of a walking metaphor, but that really was a wild goose chase…”)

Groovy Greeks

The Rescue of Socrates… Why? — “But I don’t want to be rescued!” “Why?” “Oh, don’t you start…!” “Look, no real philosopher fears death. If you rescue me, people will still find me really annoying, and I’ll end up in prison again.”

Terrible Tudors

Elizabeth I Online — In which good Queen Bess follows in her dad’s footsteps… to the dating services, if not necessarily the actual dating. (“The truth is, I am already married…” “Oh yes, your Majesty?” “…To England.” “*clik* Yep, she’s really lost it.” “I’M STILL HERE, CECIL!”)

Vile Victorians

Great Victorian Institutions: The Postal Service — Y’know, as much as we modern types complain about inefficient mail service, I’m not sure we’d’ve been able to handle the Victorian solution… (“Why won’t you leave me alone?!” “Well, that’s the joy of [it], madam. Up to twelve deliveries a day, come rain or shine, and all at a reasonable charge!”)

Vicious Vikings

New Home Abroad — In which Chipper Host Mat’s efforts to relocate a Nordic couple to English climes are hampered by… local, erm,  customs. (“Whoa whoa whoa, guys! Don’t kill them!” “You are right. Perhaps we have been a little hasty. After all, we’re going to need a couple of slaves!”)

Field Notes:

• Every now and again, when I’m at a bit of a loss re: the current review, I go back and reread the previous ones for inspiration. Then I decide to do a bit of editing ‘as long as I’m here’, and the next thing I know it’s several hours later and deadline’s looming so I just bung whatever down and hope for the best. Which thus will still, eventually, need editing. So it’s kind of a vicious cycle really.
• Until today, when I realised that hey, I’ve done all the editing, on account of I’ve been at this for forty reviews now. Which led to the real epiphany: it is past time simply to pause and realise just how far the show had come in four series.
• I mean, I’m rereading S01E05, wherein I was totally all ‘ooh, great episode!’ and it didn’t even have a song. It did have Caligula, also auto-squealing pork insulting Simon Cowell… but really now.
• So this right here is what ‘ooh, great episode!’ looks like in Series Four: all the way from live-action kiddy book cartoon to clever, complex exploration of possibilities. As you can tell from the above, I had a real struggle with this one not to just quote the whole thing and call it a week.
• I only regret to report there is no Simon Cowell… oh, who am I kidding? Never understood that one. Not that I understand the obsessive need to take shots at the Masterchef hosts that well either, but at least in that case there are compensations.
• Also, the playing-with-food shtick has literally been around since Episode One, albeit back then called Ready Steady Feast, so by now, you’ve got the possibilities down. And as the cherry on top, if you like, you have Larry, whose affinity for the HMasterchef milieu may be even more bemusing-yet-rewarding than the writers’. Here he shows off a rather startlingly effective amorality that usually gets muted amid the random goofiness.
• So does the Viking getup, for which our blue-eyed boy discovered an affinity in S2 and never has looked back. Unfortunately the audience also discovered he has no talent for accents around the same time, which he has since tried to defend as a deliberate effort to invoke the ‘when in doubt, go over-the-top’ principle of comedy.
• All I know is, his big tough Viking comes off as having maybe once spent a weekend in Minnesota. Possibly with Martha. Which all sort of simoultaneously enhances the jokes and distracts from the… other stuff. I do unreservedly enjoy the mad gleam in Ms. Howe-Douglas’ eye upon realising she’s gonna need some slaves, though.
• In a similar vein, the ring of triumph in Shouty Man’s voice signifies his return to the Victorian era, scene of his S1/S2 glory days. He’s never more at home than when gleefully exposing the discomforting realities under the veneer of civilization, and the mock-travelogue is an inspired, ah, vehicle, with Ben once again his natural foil.
• This sketch is fully Shouty Classic… including, I notice, full (if rear) views of the outdoor gents, which I guess counts as a daring adult update of that squirting coffin doll last series.
• Speaking of daring, so there’s lots of modern civilian Mat in this one… no, that’s not the daring bit. At this point it’s the equivalent of giving the audience an extra helping of dessert before they’ve asked.
• Which, yes, means that feathery ‘do represents the icky cheap frosting on the cake. Also it is the daring bit, because frankly I have a feeling that if anything could make a man reconsider starring in a wildly popular TV series, looking in the mirror after that particular styling session would be it.
• The Historical Dentist, meanwhile, is unreservedly great, albeit not for cosmetic reasons (that pullover automatically disqualifies on those grounds). I know describing anything about this show as ‘subtle’ is just inviting snickers, but imagine a HH writer trying to capitalise on his dentist phobia in S1… wait, you don’t have to, they’d already hauled out the half a dead mouse cure, in loving close-up, five short eps in.
• So yes, let’s hear it for value of leaving things to the audience’s imagination. Especially by Sarah, who more than anyone can appreciate the difference. Even Mat and Simon have learned when to dial back the loopiness… sort of… hence the lovely little ‘silent scream’ bit.
• Which brings us round to Emicho of the Rhineland, who stars in what’s occasionally my favourite HH sketch ever. Damn but Mat enjoys these mock-chivalric posturings… which would, come to think of it, be a decent way to deal with self-image issues, when you look like a fairy-tale character to begin with.
• In an interesting level-up from the Nasty Knights last series, everyone else manages to match him with appropriately profound gravitas, so that instead of a quick expected payoff the sheer ludicrousness can be savoured as it gradually builds. Comic skills, folks.
• Also, rather surprising animal-wrangling skills, especially on Simon. Fluffy feathers or no, hanging onto a goose is never going to be the best part of your day.
• No, I haven’t forgotten the song. Nooooooo. The song is central to my thesis; you’ll recall that while S01E05 doesn’t have a song, S01E12 most definitely does… yeah, OK, you’re excused for not remembering it, but it was about how great it was to be Greek, except as performed by by Jim and Mat not aalll that convincing.
• This is the other one I mentioned at the time: the Greek thinkers’ song that does, actually, merge the iconoclasts of ancient times with their equally iconic modern counterparts in a way that makes the irreverence feel fresh and the respect sincere.
• Aka the one in which Aristotle is totally on speed, and in possibly related news also has a beard. Seriously, while I can appreciate excitement making it difficult to fine-tune his face — that must be a chore on the best of days — Mat isn’t so much communicating ‘endearingly kooky’ here as he is ‘climactic freakout of the After-School Special’.
• Then again… it’s the 60’s, this isn’t exactly unrealistic (or un-educational, come to that). Besides he’s onscreen a lot with Jim, so, y’know, precedent.
• This is also the song in which Our Larry the Perpetually Accent-Challenged somehow pulls out a note-perfect takeoff on Ringo. Also also, Ben contrives to genuinely get in the groove for the first time since that one S2 song with the monks, and this time in full daylight. So I am inclined generally to assume that whatever was in the ether that day, it was good, man.
• This extends to the intro sketch. Only Willbond’s smug could be simoultaneously annoying enough that people would fully support his execution and yet charming enough that this sketch  is hilarious — albeit I must admit that Mat and Simon’s frustration looks pretty damn realistic. The result of several run-throughs too many, perhaps?
• In other news, there’s something about adorable weasely little Jim beneath that huge helmet plume that tells me the plushie just picked up another accessory.
• Hey, Dom Duckworth! Who is actually starting to really grow on me. Between having stumbled on an excellent subject for this sort of sketch — and a nice complement/followup to the Dissolution last sketch to boot — for once Dom’s on a roll. Which makes the ‘state of the streets’ running gag a really clever idea, because… yeah, otherwise Jim as hard-nosed reporter would become less and less convincing.
• Ah, Lawry, every once in awhile I realise why they keep you around — because you can snivel really really convincingly, is what I’m thinking here, so that may not actually be a compliment, sorry. Meantime, Simon’s native ability to slide into that hard, grasping Northern stereotype (shades of Palin and Swamp Castle) has evidently been well under-used up to now.
• The Elizabeth I Online bit, on the other hand, makes full use of previous funny, so that all the little seemingly throwaway gags in her dad’s original tech foray reappear. It’s just incredibly endearing to me that they’re not only keeping continuity with these details, but expanded on them, so you’ve got this whole totally coherent parody narrative that opens with ‘Mullions XP’ and winds up with Elizabeth changing her relationship status to ‘married… to England’ while Cecil fails utterly to understand the ‘mute’ button.
• The show has now basically created an entire sitcom around Tudor marital troubles as filtered through modern social media, and why the hell not? Despite some serious messing with the actual timeline (see below) I am still fully onboard with the sheer on-point cleverness of it all. The individual characterizations are great… much love esp. for Martha, who gives what may be her finest prose performance of the series, esp. when reacting to Amy Dudley’s death.
• And thus we swing back around to the present, and the LoG… and my ongoing delight. Sorry, kids, I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I really am trying my best; I know they’re increasingly alien to the HH milieu, I know (now) that the concept’s a shameless ripoff — but somehow, the fundamental humour centres of my brain just refuse to be irritated.
• Confronted full-on with the realisation that that Reece there on the end would ordinarily have us planning to throttle him right through the screen by now, the humour centres just sort of went ‘Ehhhh…’ and gave me an apologetic shrug. Then they pointed out that these bits enable us to fully appreciate Vaguely Swishy Barbarian Jim without actually having to rewatch the ‘Danke Magazine’ sketch, and what could I do but give in?

95% Accu-rat:

• So, according to YouTube, the current segment of the Icelandic population with too much time on their hands would like a few words with this episode’s producers re: the characterization of their homeland. Starting with the animated-map-makers who heard ‘Viking’ and went ‘Norway!’ and now will never hear the end of it, ever.
• On the other hand, Emicho of the Rhineland (more formally Count Emicho of Flonheim, “sometimes incorrectly known as Emicho of Leiningen”, because apparently there was a difference): In this case the Net fully agrees with Rattus, this was one bad dude.
• Basically he seems to have gotten jealous of the popular Crusade movements of the day — ie., 1096 — and decided to announce that Christ had not only appeared to him in a vision, but offered to make him Emperor of the World and everything once everyone was converted, so there nyah.
• This being the Dark Ages, this managed to impress some few thousand people (including the ones who worshipped the Spirit-stuffed goose and goat) who promptly marched up and down the Rhine in his name forcibly converting Jews. Or, more often, simply murdering them upon refusal and confiscating their valuables, because apparently Christ had left the question of financing the Second Coming a bit vague, and Emicho was just that kind of go-getter.
• Right! *cracks knuckles* As noted above, there’s some serious temporal tinkering happening within the Elizabeth I sketch. The actual timeline of major events mentioned (which should give an even better idea of how intricate the sketch itself is) goes like this:
• 1558: Twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth ascends to the throne, appoints ‘special friend’ Robert Dudley her new Master of Horse (with the right to ride next to her at all times, wink-wink-say-no-more) and immediately starts taking grief from Cecil and her Privy Council — aided and abetted by Parliament — about the whole marriage-and-heirs thing. This is seen as a religious as well as a political duty, and divinely appointed ruler or no, no 16th-century male is about to trust a woman with her own reproductive powers.
• Elizabeth, in response, immediately starts dangling her eligibility in front of the other great powers of Europe… playing them off one another… spinning out prospective courtships as long as she can… gaining all the favours and concessions that implies. This will eventually evolve into history’s only full-fledged foreign policy based almost entirely around a womb, and will net her even Cecil’s grudging respect, if not approval.
• 1560: Amy Dudley, wife of Robert, dies under suspicious circs, having been found at the foot of a staircase at her home just hours after insisting all her servants leave her to attend a local fair. Elizabeth acts with characteristic decisive ruthlessness to avoid scandal and preserve her throne, ordering a full inquiry and banishing Dudley from court for the duration.
• It’s eventually decided that brittle bones caused by advanced breast cancer was enough reason for her to have fallen and broken her own neck — also, the whole ‘advanced cancer’ thing meant there was no real reason to kill her in the first place — but by then Robert Dudley will have already acquired the faintly sinister rep that will follow him throughout history.
• 1578: Having finally realised that Elizabeth really really meant that whole ‘I will never marry’ thing she first threw at him when they were, like, five, Dudley — now Earl of Leicester — defiantly hooks up with her cousin Lettice Knollys instead. Liz is furious, but just can’t quit her Robert, so takes revenge by banishing Lettice from court while requiring her man there constantly.
• 1584: Leicester’s stepson, Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, comes to court under stepdad’s sponsorship (in much the same way William Cecil is concurrently grooming young son Robert to take his place). By now Liz is of course well past marrying age, but still, evidently, highly susceptible to handsome young silver-tongued courtiers.
• 1588: Leicester dies. A grieving Queen takes further steps to set Essex up in his place, naming him the new Master of Horse and granting him his stepdad’s lucrative patents, as well as sending him out on military expeditions, notably to Ireland. That the vain, arrogant, rash youth deserves none of it will take a few more years yet to sink in.
• 1591: Sir Walter Raleigh does not, in fact, ask the Queen before he marries Bess Throckmorton, hence spends his honeymoon  in the Tower. It’s generally conceded that this likely had a personal component.
• 1601: Essex, having arrogantly, rashly etc. made a hash of his Irish assignment and further disobeyed orders not to return until it was fully straightened out, is deprived of his privileges and patents. Desperate, he decides to foment rebellion against the evil advisors he’s certain must be poisoning the Queen’s mind against him. This largely consists of Essex wandering the streets yelling ‘To arms! To arms!” and then being all kinds of surprised when exactly nobody flocks to his banner. He’s eventually arrested and executed.
• 1603: Elizabeth dies age 70, by all accounts still a virgin. It was one hell of a ride.

 

S04E02

Well, do tuck in, Mr. Ambassador!
Aren’t you going to say grace first?
Oh — yes. *folds hands reverently* Party. On.
Ah…amen?
Big time.

A followup that takes skilful advantage of both familiarity and famous names to keep the event-TV ball rolling… and oh yeah, tosses out another sublimely sparkling musical gem in the process.

In this episode:

Song: Natural Selection — Mat as Charles Darwin, with Jim (and, apparently, ‘Stuart from Production’) as The Gorilla. (Parody of: David Bowie, Changes)

Recurring sketches:

Bob Hale — The Human Report

Historical Apprentice — Team Pirate vs. Team Merchant (“So… who was your project manager?” “Arrrr! I prefers the term ‘Cap’n’!” “Yeah, well, I prefer the term ‘King’, but I’ve got to do with plain old ‘Lord’, haven’t I?”)

Oh Yea! Magazine — Nell Gwyn special: Superstars of the Stuart stage — female for the first time!… possibly not coincidentally, during Charles II’s rule. (“What can I say? I’m a lady magnet!”)

One-offs:

Vile Victorians

Victoria & Albert: The Photo Love Story — …but frankly, I’m more interested in the revelation that the Queen had a really snarky proto-Bachelorette-host butler. (“With all due respect, Ma’am, he’s totally fit.”)

Terrible Tudors

Martin Luther at Home — Or, more specifically, in one room of his home. The smallest room.. which he’s redone into the largest. The father of the Protestant Reformation had an unhealthy fixation on the health of his fecal matter, is what I’m trying to get across here. (“So now, I can do my business, while I do my business! Ha-ha! I make ze joke…”)

Cash in the Abbey — Henry VIII runs the dissolution of the ecclesiastical properties of England pretty much the way you’d expect… ie. the only reason I’m not making a steamroller joke here is because they hadn’t been invented yet. (“Yes, well, they shouldn’t have done all those terrible things that we said they did!”)

Hide and Priest — Religious intolerance helps to provide antique manor hidey-holes enough to delight an entire future generation of Agatha Christie fans. “The game that brings Protestants and Catholics together… only not in a good way.”

Woeful Second World War

Station Identification — Larry’s first-ever HH sketch, used as Mat’s first audition, finally sees the light of day: a carriage-full of wartime railway passengers and their conductor try with ever-decreasing success to maintain security and their sanity at the same time.

Gas Bag Blues (animated) — Finding a way around petrol rationing strains the limits of even British ingenuity… and dinner on the unlit gas fire once they got home couldn’t have been much compensation, either.

Slimy Stuarts

Charles II at Home — Which at mealtimes he just happens to share with an entire gallery-full of his closest random subjects…

Field Notes:

• Let us now consider the curious phenomenon that TVTropes has dubbed Sesame Street Cred: the enormous cachet celebrities gain by making an appearance on the Street (or, by now, nearby programming suburbs) as driven by the mutual realisation that few things are as appealing to parents as attractive, talented adults voluntarily taking time out to hang with little kids.
• I mention it because while it got a little lost in all the LoG hype, somewhere in the off-season — in much the more traditional manner of these things — currently-hot stand-up comic/Willbond’s Thick of It co-star Chris Addison also revealed himself and family as big fans, and could he please come over and play sometime? Not, nota bene, get the Big Name treatment, or even his own segment, or anything; just maybe hang out with the HH troupe for awhile.
• In other words it was, even more than the opportunity to host Mark Gatiss’ class reunion, validation that the HH crew had attained to SSCred on their own merits — their own creative merits. The kid’s show had hit another small but significant milestone on the road to grownup credibility: they had evolved into not only a place where adult celebrities wanted to be, but where they wanted to interact on the show’s own terms. A mutually-beneficial enhancement of talent, not just image.
• As if to demonstrate exactly how that happened, our song this week is the first HH tuneage to be based entirely around the triumph of intellectual discovery, rather than the more conveniently relateable personal or moral conquest. And somehow young Mathew gets that, on a visceral level that makes this easily his best performance, musical or otherwise, of the show to even date.
• (Also weirdly — and amusingly — reminiscent of another. As portrayed on HH, Darwin’s closest cousin may be Robert Knox, the unwitting conspirator of Burke & Hare.)
• Sure, it helps that this time they gave him a note-perfect Bowie pastiche, but it was up to him to then make the connection. Lo these many months later, I am still cranky about it not winning Baynton that Best Actor BAFTA.
• Picture, say,  Bill Nye… except as translated through a Victorian gentleman in his eighties. All that same charisma of utter conviction only confined mostly to those uncannily expressive eyes, glittering with all the reminiscent awe of ch-ch-changing our fundamental relationship to the universe…
• Also, OK, there’s a drumming gorilla. Regardless of which the staging matches the performance note-for-sweetly-erudite-note; fully managing to be silly while refusing to compromise the sophistication. It all represents possibly the most intelligent series of artistic choices the show ever made. Just edging out Richard III’s song by a stuffed finch.
• Speaking of intelligent choices, the accompanying Bob Hale report… Oookay, I can now officially show you one whacky daring CBBC children’s comedy that’s going to have to be heavily edited — again — before it hits American screens.
• Seriously, I’m pretty sure the American heartland would let the ‘brownface’ skate by well before they’d sign off on the ape in the ‘I’m Evolving’ tee, however adorable — and so is ‘Handy Man’, incidentally. (Albeit fudged a bit re: racial characteristics, for obvious reasons. Imagine being the little kid of colour on the playground the day after the cool TV show implied your ancestors were monkeys?)
• Less appealing is Bob’s decision to physically slow the showmanship down just as his material’s gotten way more ambitious. Understandable, mind, but also massively un-nerving — and not just because of the relentlessly ongoing aging thing illustrating human mortality way beyond what was intended.
• It’s just… all so responsible, and stuff. Yes, I know — I started out totally aghast at the lack of child development cues in HH, and now they’ve finally given in three series later, even this little teeny bit, I’m going on like a teenage slacker upon learning her friends have gone out and gotten a job. But — Bobsy, man! They got to Bobsy! *snif*
• What? Oh yes, our guest star. Erm… so yay, more spot-on savaging of random British reality types I don’t know who they are! Mind, we of course have The Apprentice over here too, so we’re roughly on the same satirical-potential page here. It’s just weird, when it gets this specific.
• Everybody’s all ‘Yeah, that’s him! Jim’s so totally captured him!” and I’m here realising that a) I’m gonna have to do some in-depth research and b) based on what I’m seeing I obviously don’t want to research at all. So I just sit there frantically trying to glean between the lines. Regular readers especially can imagine how well this has worked out thus far. “But… but… he has decent hair, and everything! What are you people even complaining about?!” *sob*
• So eventually I just give up and give in to the surefire hilarity that is pirates -vs- merchants as reality competition, as close to a no-fail concept as the writers have ever been confronted with.
• Which means we’ve finally gotten around to Chris Addison!… no, him, the guy on the far right of Team Merchant. The one in the really goofy wig…?
• Yeah, I’m not sure either. I mean, what I said above is great and all, but you do go in assuming they’d give him a customised feature role, a la Alexi Sayle as the Muslim healer. What we ended up with instead is a rather oddly formal Portrait of a Comedian Trying Just a Trifle Too Hard to Fit In, and who thus ends up getting thoroughly upstaged not only by Lord Jim, Pirate Mat and Merchant Larry, but very nearly by a totally mute Greg J., here seen making something of a career out of adorably devoted seconds-in-command.
• On the other hand, this stern critic person’s inner child fully recognises that it would be well-nigh impossible to show up to the HH set and not immediately demand the part involving just the flounciest wig going. She is furthermore sort of impressed that they did manage to work the cute naiive-looking thing into the point of the skit, however offhandedly.
• Our Chris also gets some bonus points for noticing (on Twitter) that the new credit sequence references Jim as Martin Luther on the toilet over ‘horrors that defy description’. We get the actual sketch here, and I’m pleased to report that those rumours are a trifle exaggerated. Although I may just be less easy to impress since the one elder in my congregation started thinking of his bowel cleanses as chipper post-service conversation.
• I do love Jim’s completely anachronistic but somehow utterly appropriate Muppet voice, though. Especially when I picture it coming out of the real Luther. You’re welcome.
• The most interesting part of this sketch is who’s coming up the stairs to be shocked by all this. Of course it should be Ben… except it’s actually Simon. Get real used to the resulting bemusement, because this is the first tentative sign of S4’s final and in some ways most offbeat off-stage wrinkle.
• Not the part where Farnaby becomes near-ubiquitous; this is the natural consequence of more complex sketches, that there will simply be more Generic Guy roles… and this is HH, he’s about as generic as it gets, given that Larry’s weird became an official plot point as of the Aztec song.
• No, the really odd bit is the noticeable effacement of Willbond for much of this series, without explanation, even in places where he should logically be. And (spoiler alert) in S5, the same bizarre dynamic seems to be happening with Lawry/Mat. Not that any of it exactly disrupts anything critically — more like a really low-level disturbance in the creative Force. Picture… I dunno, the Dead Parrot suddenly being Slovakian Purple instead of Norwegian Blue. It doesn’t change anything, but it totally does.
• Speaking of which, starting to realise why they brought Sarah H. back. Like Lawry — and, by this point, the whole Stuart novelty-foods schtick — she fills a niche so well that I can value having it around. I certainly can’t imagine anyone else making such a good job of Nell Gwyn, nor in turn any character more suited to the gossip-rag parody format. The little surrounding bits, with Charles II and Ben the theatre manager, likewise deftly hysterical.
• Of course we’ll never lose Ben entirely, not as long as Henry VIII’s around (and has apparently borrowed Richard III’s fur robes this year! That’s… a bit creepy, actually, given their history.) The advent of subtlety has nicely co-incided with the running out of marriage gags, so we’ve moved on to the Dissolution as ‘Cash in the Attic’-style game show.
• This is a brilliant idea, if still too dedicated to the notion of Henry as brutal bully (see below). Ben’s gotten just a bit too comfy in the part, I think;  he’s missing the edge of intellectual deception that was the original’s trademark. I’m a bit disappointed really that he doesn’t rise to the challenge, he could’ve made something really interesting of it.
• The rising-to-the-challenge stuff is all Larry’s, this time — since hiding behind more openly ruthless lackies was also a Tudor specialty. Barring that the original was quite a bit heftier and much less primly hypocritical (see below), he pulls out a very nice dourly contemptuous Cromwell… especially so given that, while Larry’s skillset involves many unexpected things, ‘dour’ is about the last I would’ve assigned him before now.
• Oh, and welcome back Mat the cheerily amoral reality-show host. The experiment last series has become the fixture in this… prep for which must involve quite a lot of watching really tacky TV, for this he has my sympathies. I of course can’t comment on how fine or not each specific parody is, but I do like the attention he pays to the little details, like the hands in his pockets here.
• I also really like the performance he gives as the harassed railway conductor in Larry’s first-ever sketch. Clearly, the audition gods were smiling on him that day; this is sweet-but-edgy stuff all but specially designed to show off his strengths.
• So of course is Charles II… even so his creakily predictable bit should not be hitting me as this unbearably hilarious, but there it is. Enjoy the compliment to your comic timing, guys.
• One more new addition to meet this ep: the Young Victoria, of whose impersonation Martha makes a remarkably nice job (Katy Wix might make even a better one, but the female cast seems to have been entirely rejiggered this year around other commitments).
• Nice understated bit of BBC cozy-corner parody this… possibly a bit too understated, in Jim’s case, or more specifically, Jim’s on-and-off-again German accent… yeah, well, I suppose Ben would be fudging reality a bit too far.
• Anyway, it’s Jim and Martha who have the couple-chemistry, and I continue to admire the show’s persistence in finding ways to use it. Ooh, and hey, Lawry being all Alfred-style-snarky! Y”know, I could actually get used to this… mostly because it gives me hope that eventually he’s going to snap and interrupt all the billing-and-cooing with a machete, but still.

95% Accu-rat:

• Right, do I even have to say it? That’s not quite how the Dissolution went. Sure, the sketch gets the royal motives right, and Thomas Cromwell — the self-made son of a blacksmith — really was that perpetually grumpy and/or ruthless, which might have something to do with the fact that nobody at court ever let him forget the blacksmith thing. (They were also no help when he finangled Henry a Protestant bride; to be fair though, she turned out to be Anne of Cleves, nothing was gonna help him with that one.)
• The kicker was that — as the show has admitted in the past and will admit again as early as next episode (thank you, D.Duckworth) quite often the monasteries actually, um, did do all those things Henry and co. said they did. Refer back to S02E11 for the full story of how the only lifestyle difference being  a man or woman of God had for centuries basically meant was that now you were cooped up with a whole lot more available persons of the opposite sex. And they were probably also bored out of their frequently-tiny minds. You get the idea.
• That said, there were inevitably also a whole lot of sincere, honest religious types who were deeply affected by the whole thing — mostly the lower ranks, so with very little if any influence on the larger project. The result was an irreparable rip in the basic fabric of English life. Not only were the spiritual houses that had acted as a sort of social assistance net, sheltering and feeding the poor as needed, now closed for good… but the priests etc doing the housing now found themselves thrown on the mercy of now-nonexistent resources. Let’s just say there was something of an explosion in the transient/beggar population, in the later years of Henry’s reign.
• So no, it wasn’t entirely Charles Darwin’s reflection that led to natural selection… and no, I’m not doing the entire entry like that. Contrary to appearances, I do have a life, you know.
• Anyway, Darwin was pretty well puttering along towards the whole Unified Theory of Everything World-Changing when a guy named Alfred Russell Wallace sent him an essay on whaddaya know, the exact same subject, only with a few holes filled in. As Darwin later frankly acknowledged, there were a couple of other sciencey types kicking similar ideas around as well, only they didn’t get as far as publishing papers,  so, y’know, sucked to be them.
• Otherwise this is a reasonably neat layman’s summary of the concept that eventually came to solely bear Darwin’s name — largely ‘cos Wallace turned out to be something of a professional embarrassment, what with the fervent belief in Spiritualism and holding seances and whatnot. More serious students may find themselves twitching a bit (as per the exhaustive, and fascinating, first comment below).
• It did manage to find its way across sciencey-type Twitter accounts with relatively few bumps, save the one line that obviously sacrifices accuracy for a neat rhyme — fairly understandably, unless you’re an evolutionary biologist. Protip, next time you meet one at a party: do NOT make the jokes about how we evolved from chimps. (According to current theory we came up along parallel tracks.)
• Oh, and QI aside, YouTube commenters: yes indeed, the Church of England was formally outraged even if many of its members (and interestingly, those of other denominations), weren’t much at all — hence the formal, if rather crankily reluctant, apology 126 years later.

 

S04E01

 Take that, Hitler!

The first episode of HH the Bonafide Award-Winning Phenomenon debuts amid relentless hype, clashing expectations and creative dilemmas… if it were any other show, this is where I’d advise you start worrying. As it is, all you’ve got to be concerned with is an all-out charm assault…

In this episode:

Song: The Few (WWII RAF Pilots) — Jim as Douglas Bader; Mat, Larry, Ben and Simon as Stinky, Squiffy, Frantisek and Stanislav, respectively (Parody of: Take That, feat. Relight My Fire)

Recurring sketches:

Horrible Movie Pitch — The Dick Whittington Project (“So, who do you see playing the talking cat?” “Right, the cat thing again… This is a true story of my life. A political drama.” “Oh yeah sure sure, a political drama.” “With a talking cat.” “For kids!” “I love it.”)

Stupid Deaths — Tudor Archers (As should not actually be news, archery and stupidity don’t mix well… “So I leaned over to see what’s going on there with the bow, and…” “Yeeeessss?” “…twang. Right in me ‘ead.”)

Wonders of the Egyptian Universe —  “Before us Egyptians, no-one had any idea that the sun travelled across the sky by being rolled by a giant vast dung beetle!” “Alright, reality check, Brian: if this dung beetle is so massive, why can’t we see it?” “…a giant vast invisible dung beetle!”

Computer Game: Duat! Egyptian Journey Through the Underworld — “Look out, giant man-eating beetle! I’m packing a scroll!”

One-offs:

Slimy Stuarts

Wee For Victory — War with Scotland required a very personal sacrifice of the nation’s women… no, even more personal than that. “The makers of gunpowder for our troops are desperate… as, hopefully, are some of you…”

Warts and All — “Truly, Lady Fortune smiles on me this day! Finally, I get to paint Mr. Cromwell himself!” “…yeah, good luck with that.”

Terrible Tudors

The Spanish Armada: Judgement Year (movie trailer) — “So, to cut a long story short… no corks, no Armada.” “I’ll be back!” “Oooh, good catchphrase!” “Thanks.” “De nada.”

The Spanish Armada II: This Time It’s Really Judgement Year — “Are my ships ready?” “They are, sire.” “Do my barrels have corks?” “They do, sire!”
…”Bad news, sire! We have lost more than feefty sheeeps!” “…and the good news?” “Uhm… there’s venison for supper?”

The Spanish Armada III: This Time It Must Be Judgement Year — “What news of my Armada? Has it at last been successful?” “It has caused minor damage to Mousehole! An inconsequential village in Cornwall! Yay!” “I’ll be back!…maybe. It might take awhile.”

(Pause for Stupid Deaths sketch above, then…)

The Spanish Armada IV: Maybe This is Judgement Year — “I don’t care what happens, so long as my fleet of 140 galleons wasn’t wrecked by storms off the English coast!” “It wasn’t! … it never got that far. It was wrecked by storms off the Spanish coast.”

The Spanish Armada V: Let’s Face It, It’s Not Gonna Be Judgement Year — “Storms again?… yeah, I won’t be back. Forget it.”

Gorgeous Georgians

(Fees for) Safety First — In which seventeenth-century fire insurance is handled with all the empathic finesse of a… modern health insurance debate, come to think of it. “What happened to ‘No blaze too big, no fire too small’?!” “If you’re not insured, we won’t help at all!” “Well, can I at least borrow a bucket?” “NO.”

Toilet in the Court — You know how you never see aristocratic people going to the loo in those swank historical dramas? This right here is why.

Savage Stone Age

World of Stone — “We’ve got all the furniture new to the Neolithic era! Beds! Cupboards! Shelves! Dressers! Chairs! Even limpet tanks! Buy now, don’t pay until the Bronze Age*!” (*Delivery times may vary a lot. For henges please allow thirty years.)

Early News: End of an Era? — Guess what, people who stand in line for days to pick up the latest Apple gadget: you were out-tooled — literally — about four thousand years ago.  (“Ooh, look, they’re so shiny an’ all!” “Ehh, I reckon this whole Bronze Age thing is just a fad. I’m gonna wait for the Iron Age to come along.”)

Woeful Second World War

First, We Hit the Gift Shop — “German High Command wants us to bomb any city with three stars in the Baedeker guide.” “Do they have fudge? I luff fudge!”

Field Notes:

• Well, this is exciting. Where I came in, you might say. Those familiar with my S2 reviews — and if you haven’t been printing them out and memorising key passages, why not, may I ask? — at any rate, those willing to put up with me to this point may recall that it was round about the Stonewall Jackson sketch in S02E11 that I finally decided to ask Google if it was just me.
• What I found first was the Prom, which had just happened. So… clearly not just me then. The next thing I found was a comment thread re: the minor post-Prom debacle in which the cast was prevented from coming out to meet their fans, to which both Mat and Jim had apparently responded.
• This in turn led to an impulse to match the names I’d found to the faces… which in turn led to the discovery that holy crap there was an entire fandom out there. An over-12 fandom. (Good thing I picked up on that latter tidbit before I discovered the fanfiction, or things might’ve gotten really weird.)
• There was also somewhere in there Stephen Fry, besides a boatload of awards, up to and including the British Comedy Award for Best Sketch Comedy. You’ll note the lack of “children’s” in that sentence; the People Who Notice These Things, UK division, certainly did. When they weren’t too busy swooning over the highwayman and snickering at the audacity of a platinum-blond Death.
• Clearly a delighted BBC had found itself driving a bonafide bandwagon: the kiddy educomedy it was cool for adults to love, too.
• It was all just ridiculously, hilariously adorable… which made it unique among my experiences at the time. Clearly the only thing to do — and you might just keep this in mind, kids, next time someone tells you that escapism is harmless — was write a lengthy article for the semiprestigious online pop-culture ‘zine I was blogging for at the time, explaining in excruciating detail what a cultural phenomenon this children’s series had become…
• …on which note I would just like to thank the entire Horrible Histories team for subsequently making me look awesomely prescient. I can tell, because as the hype for Series Four commenced, it became clear that the UK comedy community was backing me up. The show that had once pinned all its hopes for notice on Meera Syal reading fairy tales now found itself fielding a request from genre wunderkind Mark Gatiss and his buddies from the League of Gentlemen troupe, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, that the show host their reunion.
• The HH team fell all over their hero-worship in their rush to say yes. Given that the LoG had produced some of the most famously dark, quirky, critically-acclaimed comedy of the last decade, this was already a much better idea than the fairy tales (or, for that matter, the Scary Stories).
• Ideas that, as it happened, were badly needed. As was starting to be evident towards the latter end of S3 and will become much clearer from here on in, the nature of the show’s material had undergone a sea change.
• Human nature dictates that the well of Horrible historical moments will never run dry. As HH viewers well knew, though, there’s a significant difference between a moment surefire enough to sum up in a cartoon and one that — while not necessarily less subtle — does require more deft handling to extract the edutainment. Let alone what is at least nominally children’s edutainment.
• And the HH crew had not so much run out of the former as run them into the ground. I have a mental image of writers scanning the books ever more frantically; after a moment of tense silence, one speaks: “… I suppose there’s always the Baron Rothschild and his –” “NO.”
• Thus they found their imaginative resources tested to the hilt, at just about the worst possible moment. Full-blown comic maturity, that praiseworthy novelty up til now, had suddenly become the base expectation. Luckily, a team that had spent years juggling education with Python were not people who were about to be unnerved by this kind of spotlight.
• As if to prove it, S4 kicks off with a bit of ecclesiastical exquisiteness that is the visually lavish equivalent of anything in any adult BBC historical costume epic… riiight up until you realise that what the unctuous clergyman is piously intoning is an urgent request for ladies’ pee. As in, chamber pots now available under the pews, hint hint. Welcome to Horrible Histories.
• Which they then follow up with an odd little interlude focussing on Oliver Cromwell’s ‘warts and all’ —  that’s literally the entire point, that warts are somehow grotesque abominations — that comes across as a script abandoned half-way through but filmed anyway because…
• …well, hell if I know. Maybe the f/x crew spent all off-season perfecting Cromwell’s new makeup and nobody had the heart to tell them? They’d heard the fandom rumours about Lawry leaving the show and wanted to have a bit of fun off the top?
• Alright, so subtle doesn’t always mesh well with shrewd. But by the time you get to a fourth series, sometimes, as per the above bit, endearing works nearly as well. Yeah, I think I did just call Lawry endearing. Something about the way he skates right out to the edge of petulant whining trying to find a reason to still be onscreen is… appealing-adjacent.
• A much more effective combination of experience and intuition and endearing happens in the Armada sketch(es). There’s an aspect to Mat and Larry’s chemistry particularly–like mischievous kids, slyly egging each other on–that’s perfect for this kind of entirely character-driven dialogue. They have the perfect foil too in Ben-as-Drake, whose uber-suave self got his own special notice in the reviews, and rightfully so.
• Again though, my Ben feels always go sideways from the obvious, in this case to the enchanting… that inevitably happens whenever his & Simon’s particular, and particularly mature, understanding of silliness is deliberately paired.
• I’m not sure whether it’s the result of perceptive writers or production carefully selecting the assignment, but by now the unusually witty, subtle scripts they’re handed cannot be a co-incidence. Even less so that their greatest challenge yet — a quest out to the very darkest edge of black comedy — appears here, at the height of adult expectation.
• There’s much less subtletly but still a lot of great ensemble stuff also from Martha and the competing fire brigades, demonstrating how much individual leeway they’ve been given by now within the format — to become a troupe, in fact. The evolution of Yonderland etc starts right here, kids.
• Simon and the marshmallows… nope, he hasn’t let me down yet. Not even once. And certainly not while being the go-to caveperson. In related news, it’s kind of interesting, as always, what media concepts — like annoying furniture ads — turn out to be cross-cultural… it’s somehow always not the ones I would’ve imagined.
• We’re actually reintroduced to Death in the middle of playing rock-paper-scissors with the skeletons, which I like to think of as my own little present for being a really good fan.
• Aside from which — and the total lack of explanation for the new mummy sidekick, which acts as the pink bow on top — his contribution to the new creative subtlety this season will involve more patiently letting the corpses… ah, hang themselves, so to speak, with their own stories. Or, in this case, accents. Larry’s is the better anecdote, but Mat’s — by a hair — is the better-told.
• By now, of course, you’re wondering how the music fits into all this… well, if you’re not, rest assured that the prospective new S4 audience certainly was, with bells on. Having as usual already surmounted the challenges the prose sketches were facing, this series’ musical efforts will focus increasingly on finding clever genre matches as a sort of quick shortcut to maintaining that impressiveness, or at least, quite a lot of impressed new fans.
• Whether the actual songwriting itself rose to the occasion… well, that’s to be seen. For now, it’s altogether irrelevant. The point of this series’ debut number is merely “Yeah, you remember that boy-band thing you all drooled over? So check this — now we have DANCE MOVES!”
• …Sort of. Kiddy-show-level expectations do have their uses, not least when trying to pass off Willbond needing to not only stay in step but hold a note. Also, Larry doing that… whatever he does, when there’s music. Expecting it is not quite the same thing as being prepared for it.
• Then there is Mat, who’s throwing himself full-tilt into the derring-do-doing despite wearing a uniform that is easily two sizes too big. Granted they’ve done a very decent job of tucking the extra in round the belt; still, being the one member of the squadron with both a lead vocal and a noticeably nipped-in waist must’ve been a bemusing experience. I also wouldn’t have minded being in Jim’s head when they told him about having to fake prosthetic legs.
• Anyway, it’s a smart and straightforwardly affectionate tribute to some very deserving subjects, that misses none of the expected beats and takes a few fun leaps into unexpected snark, then sticks the landing beautifully. I’m literally only just now realising how tacky topping things off with a Churchill quote could’ve come across under the circs, that’s the level of goodwill this show had built up to this point. As far as I know, there wasn’t even a perturbed letter written to the Daily Mail.
• So having gone on at length about subtlety and complexity, I must now concede that it’s time to introduce the League of Gentlemen into the conversation. Personally I could sum the whole thing up as ‘I don’t care if the HH stuff is nothing more than a showcase for their reunion, it’s all just completely freakin’ hilarious,’ but given that this is clearly the minority POV…
• The trick is remembering that it is the LoG’s reunion. Everything I said in S02E03 about giving the Big Name(s) a safe place to play within an established, stylised concept applies here as well, except with extra chocolate on top in the form of what I said earlier in this review about it being an honour. No offense to the uber-dependable David Baddiel, but his presence didn’t rate a full-colour spread in the Radio Times. (Although it can be argued that the fez deserved one.)
• In that context, perhaps it’s worth reconsidering the fact that two parties nevertheless came up with a durable, dependably funny and fascinating concept — one that meshes the worlds of celebrity and historical satire in a way that’s relevant to both, leaving the LoG free rein to do their preternaturally quick, clever thing and the show to provide interesting historical insights at the same time. Come to think of it, in most important respects it’s quite like Stupid Deaths.
• This one in particular, I can’t understand what’s not to love. There’s just something about the way they bounce the over-the-top cynicism off Mat’s primly sweet earnestness — the talking cat -vs- “I created the first public toilets in London!” — that means I can’t stop giggling, no matter how often I watch it. (“How do you feel about Keira Knightley playing you?” Oh, god…)
• Also, as a footnote, nifty bit of accent misdirection on Gatiss there at the beginning. No idea why he decided to try the American, but I salute a decent attempt. The whole corporate stuffed-shirt thing really suits him, weirdly enough.
• “Hi, I’m a hot Egyptian scientist…” Oh, very subtle, there, show. In not-unrelated news, the other major creative development this series will be a sharp uptick in the recognizable parodies. Despite the challenges any pop-culture takeoff faces re: aging well — and, as I can testify, exporting well — this is basically good news. Both as a way to be very-but-not-really adult, and to take advantage of some hitherto criminally unappreciated mimicry skills among the troupe.
• Having now seen the original, I can appreciate that ‘Lewin!’ would’ve popped into the producer’s heads almost immediately. It’s a shade too excitable for strict accuracy — as far as I can gather, Prof. Cox is more about the angsty “I am but a dust mote in the Great Cosmic Reality” understatement — but having once been handed this assignment, it’s easy to understand our Lawry jumping at it full-tilt. He’s won my heart… for those three minutes, anyway.
• Ooh, and while we’re on about impressively heart-winning angst, check Ben in Val Kilmer’s wig from The Saint!… right, so there’s a joke exactly three people will get. Of whom at least two are on the HH makeup team.
• Speaking of which, it’s past time to pay tribute to this series’ f/x upgrades, including as noted impressively updated makeup jobs on Cromwell and Elizabeth I, a quick cut-n-style for Death, vastly improved computer-game graphics that allow for true player interaction…
• …and a squeefully tasteful teeny portrait of Gran and Grandpa Rattus, indicating that fame may have gone slightly to the head of our host rodent. (My theory is that, instead of a badger they eventually gave him a teeny raise to handle ‘the sad bits’).
• O and hai, Also Starring Sarah H.! Can’t say I’m wildly excited to have you and your shrill little voice back, but hey, you’re an integral part of the HH lore, so… on the other hand, so is Lawry. Watch it, lady.
• ‘Vanessa Stonebottom’? ‘Trevor Geek’? Yeah, some things HH will never change, no matter how much they should. Despite which the Bronze Age report is a fun little expansion on the Internet sketches (and incidentally a nice complement to the ‘aBook’ bit from S03E01).
• Much love for Mat the cave-hipster; I will not suggest he’s basically playing himself, because that would be evil, and… uh… oh, look, they even managed to work in some Ben-annoyed-with-Jim stuff! Awesome! *runs away*

95% Accu-rat:

• Congratulations on making it all the way down here! Your reward is learning that Oliver Cromwell really should’ve been referred to as ‘Lord Protector’ (or more formally, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland), not ‘Mr’.
• He wasn’t any fonder of pointlessly fancypants titles than he was of formal portraits — and of course calling him ‘Your Highness’ was just totally defeating the point — but they had to put something on the official flowcharts, so this was the compromise.
• Yep, Philip II really did not take his rejection by then-Princess Elizabeth at all well. It pleased Liz to claim in later years that his obsession with retaking England was all about thwarted love for her, and that in fact she could have him back merely by ‘crooking her little finger’. She of course refused to think of it out of love for her stalwart subjects, but still.
• In reality, of course, it had much more to do with the fact that on her accession Liz has definitively tipped the national religious scales to Protestant, and as you may recall from previous entries, Philip was a confirmed fanatical Catholic. Not that this alone exactly justified wasting the equivalent of billions in national resources or anything… only that it really helps your lust for conquest when it’s sanctioned by the Pope, and back then His Holiness could totally do that.
• Elizabeth was after all not only a ‘weak and feeble woman’, but one that the Vatican still officially considered illegitimate. By their lights, given that Mary Queen of Scots was still a toddler at this point, Philip was about as close to a Divinely-sanctioned legitimate claimant to the English throne  as was going. So you can just about imagine how wrecked his day was when God apparently sided with the heretic five times running.
• Incidentally, the ‘minor damage to Mousehole’ is more formally known as the Mounts Bay Raid, or as Wiki seems to be alone in calling it, the Battle of Cornwall. On the international scale it was indeed a pretty inconsequential affair, although to the locals the whole ‘overpowering the local militia and setting fire to the town’ thingy must’ve been pretty inconvenient at least. Sir Walter Raleigh apparently wasn’t best pleased about having to head down to what he considered the back end of civilization and train the remaining defenders, either.
• So the Egyptian Book of the Dead: actually a personalised document commissioned for each individual mummy, of which several still exist to this day. They do indeed contain all sorts of spells and other stuff to impress and amaze your friends… a lot of stuff. This is afterlife as extended D&D session, and it’s hard not to imagine that a lot of it was designed to serve mostly the same purpose. Real life probably got really really boring at times, out there in the desert hauling stones around.
• The sketch here actually starts a little late in the process; you’re a mummy, remember, so your first priority would be making sure all that disembowelling wouldn’t hurt your chances. During embalming there would be chants performed to preserve your body (‘jewelled heart scarabs’ available for a small fee in case of damage to the real thing), and later on food and incense offerings designed to satisfy your ka, or life-force, which was a bit peckish after all that reassembly.
• Finally, the appropriate spells would then transmute you into a sort of soul-shadow, suitable for negotiating the Byzantine corridors of the afterlife — many, many more than could be comfortably fitted into one short sketch.
• If you were lucky — or at least had friends with a lot of time on their hands — and completed all the steps above, you became an akh, and earned the right to travel with Ra himself in his golden barge; if not, you remained a ba, a bird-headed being that had to maneuvre under its own, um, wing-power. Either way, I can’t help thinking it would’ve improved the sketch immensely…