Look Around You - DVD

Look Around You [Region 2]

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Comedy Curiosity 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Look Around You Series One:

This spoof comedy series is so firmly entrenched in its origins - a very small pocket of British television history known as Programmes for Schools, which were TV shows intended to be videotaped and shown in classrooms for educational purposes - that it might be almost impossible for it to be appreciated by anyone outside of the UK, and even for us residents, it's full genius can only be appreciated by those of us around and at school in the 1970's, or awake at night watching those hideous Open University programmes.

But luckily I was one of those people, and I I found "Look Around You" to be hysterical. The dry-as-dust delivery of the presenters and the totally bonkers ideas for educational experiments and scientific reports that populate each segment have to be seen to be believed. Each short segment passes itself off as a serious investigation into some scientific theme or other, and experiments or reports are carried out on screen to supposedly teach the viewer about various scientific facts. Of course, the facts and figures quoted or discovered during the show are all totally and hilariously fictitious, such as discussing what the highest number in the world might be, or setting a maths problem about ladies buying shoes for spiders, Sample experiments vary from the laugh-out-loud crazy to the very subtley skewed, and they include a study of ants building a miniature igloo, opening up a garden pea to extract its brain (yes it has one!), and programming a computer to compose a pop song about a mouse.

The interior studio scenes are all filmed in a clinical and stark lab setting with lots of close-ups, while the outside reports use faux grainy (or sometimes genuine recycled) 1970's stock footage. In a way, obvious ploys like getting you to laugh at bad haircuts and ugly fashions are almost overkill, but they still add extra appeal, and something to look at while you think carefully about whether "mafipulation" is a real word, or try and recall just what on earth some of the elements appearing on that Periodic Table being displayed actually were.

The narration, sets, graphics and film clips are all spot-on 1970's pastiches and the series quickly developed a cult following, albeit a small one as there are only 8 episodes and they last a tiny 10 minutes long each. Nevertheless, it did lead to a second series, which to my mind is more successful, as it spoofs another British 1970's TV show about science called "Tomorrows World", and the episodes were extended to half an hour for that format.

A great investment for anyone with a love for archaic British television. Anyone that "gets" it will find themselves in the fortunate position of laughing solidly throughout the whole series.

Look Around You 2 [Region 2 Import]

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Features:

• Programme-makers' commentary
• Pages from Ceefax
• Play-at-home quiz pages
• New Birds of Britain Film
• and more!

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Machadaynu 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I haven't laughed this hard since 'April the 4th of September.' A must see, even if you weren't subjected to the British educational films they're a send up of.

Editorial Review:

Step into the future as the Look Around You team looks forward to life in the year 2000 and beyond... We meet Medibot, the world's only robot surgeon; unveil a computer made by a horse, and hear from Britain's leading synthesizer expert, Synthesizer Patel. Plus a special live appearance from HRH Sir Prince Charles in the Look Around You Invention of the Year Final.

Look Around You [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]

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Editorial Review:

Please note that this is a PAL, Region DVD and requires PAL or multi-system capable DVD players. It will not play on standard North American DVD players. Please read the item technical description carefully. ----------------------------------- Synopsis: 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.

Look Around You [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2.4 Import - Great Britain ]

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Features:

Editorial Review:

Great Britain released, PAL/Region 2.4 DVD:it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ),English ( Subtitles ),WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Commentary, Interactive Menu, Music Video, Scene Access,SYNOPSIS: Everything in social studies teacher Eugene Simonet's life is in order--every shirt, every pencil, every person in its proper place. To keep the surface placid means never having to go deeper. And no one and nothing in his life has ever asked him to. Arlene McKinney is a single mother hanging on by her fingertips, working two jobs, and struggling to raise her son, Trevor. She is trying to give him a new life, but in her absence she is losing him. Eugene gives Trevor's class an assignment: look at the world around you and fix what you don't like. But can you fix people?