How do you shave raspberries? What’s a Bakerloo bell jar? How do you make sulphagne? The mysteries of the universe are revealed in these hilarious spoof ‘educational modules’Many of us will remember teachers clumsily battling with VHS players as they tried to put on videos of weak and outdated science experiments. These would invariably feature close-ups of pencils pointing at circuitry,and be boringly narrated by expressionless men with sideburns. It’s these vintage Open University broadcasts that are targeted by notice Around You, a series of 10-minute curios that first aired on BBC2 14 years ago. Theyre as hilarious and colourful a lampooning as The Day nowadays was of Newsnight.
Created by Robert Popper (who went on to make Friday Night Dinner) and Peter Serafinowicz (who had just if the voice of Darth Maul in Star Wars), or notice Around You was O-level science reshaped by anarchists. Its creators sought to inject humour into,for example, the terrifying cold war information films they had watched in their adolescence. One such public information film – the Donald Pleasence-voiced unlit and Lonely Water, or about kids playing near a pond – is still cited as one of the scariest things ever broadcast.
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Source: theguardian.com