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Films on the to-do list

  • Armageddon Time
  • Black Widow
  • Chimes at Midnight
  • The Killing of a Sacred Deer
  • Last Christmas
  • Remember Sunday
  • Shazam! 2
  • Thor: Love and Thunder
  • Spy Guys

Horrible Histories (2011) 3.6-7

TV episodes review: Horrible Histories: 3.6, 3.7 (2011), directed by Dominic Brigstocke, Steve Connelly and/or Chloe Thomas

We continue the forages into the horrible side of history! A couple of new features need mentioning, because I failed to mention them previously: The pet shop and Horrible Points of View. The pet shop follows the format of a man coming into a pet shop (manned by Martha Howe-Douglas) who wants to buy a pet, and the shop clerk gets more and more horrified at his reasons behind it and refuses to sell him any animals. For instance, coming in to buy a dog in order to rip its entrails out to tell the future …

In Horrible Points of View, Mathew Baynton has a mail bag from a historical era, who have written in to the BBC. For non-Brits: it’s a play on Points of View, the BBC viewer feedback show, where people write in to voice complaints, etc. The Celts sent him a severed head. It’s fun.

Other features making a comeback are the historical paramedics, still out there causing havoc on the pavements of modern Britain.

Song-wise, we have been treated to Jim Howick as Richard III, singing about how his reputation was ruined by Tudor propaganda and that a lot of the inaccuracies stem from Shakespeare’s Richard III, because the man was writing plays for Queen Elizabeth I – a Tudor. I believe The Sunne in Splendour, one of Richard Armitage’s favoured books and the basis of his Richard III project (I think?), is about this.

The next song is a Michael Jackson Bad parody starring four Roman emperors, competing over who was the most bad-ass one of the lot. I believe we’ve seen all of them previously, because I remember the guy with the Roman lottery, who was also the same as Historical Come Dine With Me in a previous series; Nero, who put the “Roman into Romantic Comedy”; and the completely bonkers Caligula, of course.

Can’t get enough of these songs! It seems to me like in this series, they’re not just copying a style of song, as in power ballad (Literally), irritatingly catchy pop song (Do The Pachacuti), Oldies (Caveman Love) and so on – no, they’ve gone a step further and are parodying actual artists and their style of songs specifically. Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga … Curious to see what else they’ve got up their sleeves!

New episode at 5:15pm/17:15 tonight.

Traxy

An easily distracted and over-excited introvert who never learns to go to bed at a reasonable time. Enjoys traveling (when there's not a plague on), and taking photos of European architecture. Cares for cats, good coffee and Boardwalk Empire. A child of her time, she did media studies in school and still can't decide what she wants to be when she grows up.

4 thoughts on “Horrible Histories (2011) 3.6-7

  1. The Pachacuti song is indeed “horribly catchy.” I can’t count the number of times my friends and I have found ourselves singing it while walking down the school hallway. 🙂

  2. I agree! That song is like a virus – it infects you in an instant and then you can’t get rid of it! A fairly pleasant virus, though. Doesn’t give you a sore throat … unless you sing it too much! 😀

  3. I love this series. Starting following Laurence Rickard on twitter. he’s quite chatty 🙂

    My kid loves to sing the songs

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