I first started watching Horrible Histories as a student on those afternoons when I’d roll out of bed and find nothing but back-to-back ‘chat’ shows on TV. So rather than stick needles in my eyes, which was the preferable option to watching four hours of Jeremy Kyle shouting at chavs with funny teeth, I flicked over to CBBC, and haven’t looked back since.
That is, until now. In the lull of a Sunday evening, right about the time when the ‘Oh no, work tomorrow’ blues kicked in, my spirits lifted as I spotted a brand new episode – nay, series! – of Horrible Histories on iPlayer (which, incidentally, is nowhere near as ‘gangsta’ as its name suggests). I immediately hit play, but something was amiss.
For starters, it’s out with the old as a completely new cast has taken over the reins of this one. Now, I’m all for change if it is for the better, but this just feels a bit, well, below par. The old ones, the good ones, managed to personify the brand of Terry Deary’s brilliant series of books that made learning feel like fun. The essence of Horrible Histories is that you’re laughing, but you’re actually learning, which is where schools go wrong. More than that, though, Horrible Histories struck that rare balance as a show intended for children that adults could actually sit through without wanting to rip their ears off. The poo jokes were for the kids, the satire for the adults.
This new bunch, however, seems to have been landed with too many of the poo jokes and not enough of the satire. Dear reader, I laughed not once during the latest episode. That’s a one hundred per cent decrease.
It’s not the new guys’ fault, though. It seems as though the show has fallen prey to one of those infamous budget cuts, as it mostly looks to have been made in front of a screen, minus the bits that they filmed in a field. And don’t even get me started on the rat. I could just about grin and bear that rodent narrator as the format of any children’s show demands some sort of accessible furry thing, but at least in the previous episodes the rat was energetic. Now it doesn’t even move its mouth in time to the voice. Talk about lacklustre (I tried to make that a rat pun. Didn’t). Looks like even the puppeteer has had a pay cut, reduced to just five mouth-movements per sentence.
Horrible Histories also made a name for itself with its songs. Hilarious send ups of popular music (favourites include the Georgian navy football song and the RAF à la Take That – look it up) that guaranteed you’d be waxing historical for the next six weeks. But the songs on this latest episode were just, dare I say it, dull. By the end of the show, I was left feeling robbed. Although I did learn a little more about the Magna Carta (mainly that King John was a bit of a dick).
So as the next episode of series six draws near, I’ll be watching in anticipation, hoping that this opener wasn’t a taste of things to come. History will always be horrible, but at least let’s be able to still laugh about it.
Two Martini Breakfast 