Look Around You: Robert Popper looks back on the ‘insane’ science TV parody A collection of ten-minute shorts satirising 1980s educational films. Even Look Around You’s co-creator Robert Popper admits the concept for […]

A collection of ten-minute shorts satirising 1980s educational films.

Even Look Around You’s co-creator Robert Popper admits the concept for the first series of the BBC Two show was a tad niche.

“We didn’t actually think it would be a TV show, we just thought this seems funny to us,” he says, 15 years on from the cult comedy’s debut.

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“Nowadays you wouldn’t get something that bizarre on terrestrial TV.”

However, the offbeat, nonsensical and hilariously strange comedy, featuring Popper and Peter Serafinowicz as mute scientists performing farcical experiments became a critically-acclaimed hit following its release in 2002.

A second series parodying Tomorrow’s World followed in 2005, featuring sex-change machines, gonnis (a hybrid sport combining golf and tennis) and the ghost of Tchaikovsky.

“I thought I was going insane, because we were just filming beakers, all with this turquoise background, which you’d just be staring at.”

A shared memory of strange science films

Popper and Serafinowicz came up with the idea for Look Around You two years after they were introduced to each other.

“We’d become like new best friends and at one point we got talking about these weird films that were on when you were at school,” Popper explains.

“Sometimes they’d put them on in science and they were so old and odd and creepy. Not like the clips of a man with a funny beard and flares, these were different.

“They had this strange blue background and they were so silent and you’d just hear the clinking of test tubes and these weird noises.”

Mesmerised by their recollection, the pair created ‘Calcium’, a short film which would become the pilot, featuring a series of fake experiments and facts about the titular element.

Even now, Popper can hardly contain his laughter when thinking back to how one segment was filmed illegally:

“We shot a scene at this location that we found in Camden, this weird old garage, but we didn’t have permission to use it.

“So we turned up in the middle of the night and as we’re filming the guys who worked there turned up in their vans and we were just standing there holding this jelly on a tray, which features in the scene, while wearing boiler suits.”

‘I thought I was going insane – we were just filming beakers’

After a well-received screening of Calcium, BBC Two commissioned a series.

Much of the writing pair’s research for the opening series consisted of “spending weekends of watching crap educational videos”, which Popper had smuggled from his then employers Granada Studios.

But when they eventually began making the series, the creative process was highly rewarding.

“Whenever myself, Peter and Tim Kirkby, who directed it, talk about series one we just think about what an utter laugh it was making it in this basement.”

“We did all the music as well, it was a great creative, fun process.”

The show’s unusual set and bizarre sequences did however play with the minds of the creators.

“One day we were filming in this basement saying ‘OK now put your finger in and point it at the test tube, OK we need one beaker there and we need a stain there’, all while I was wearing this strawberry costume.

“I thought I was going insane, because we were just filming beakers, all with this turquoise background, which you’d just be staring at.”

“One day when we did the episode on ghosts we were in a lab with a different brown background and we were all like ‘ahhhhh nice.’

Working with comedy stars – and ‘Prince Charles’

Following the release of its first series, Popper and Serafinowicz “badgered” show commissioners for a second.

After two years of persistence, the duo got their wish and started work, this time parodying Tomorrow’s World.

While Popper believes that series one was Look Around You in its purest form, it was satisfying to work with an impressive roster of comedic talent second time round.

“It was insane, we had so many great people working with us: we had Edgar Wright as a scientist, even David Walliams’ bottom features in it.”

Joined by co-presenters Olivia Colman and Josie d’Arby, Popper and Serafinowicz were also able to call upon guest appearances from David Mitchell, Simon Pegg, Adam Buxton and Nick Frost.

But it was the “appearance” of Prince Charles in the show’s finale that was the highlight of series two for Popper.

“We cut him out from another clip and managed to make it look like he was actually walking around the Look Around You studio.

“The whole series led up to that, we kept mentioning him and people watching didn’t think he’d turn up, and then suddenly he’s there interacting with the audience.

“One of us dubbed over him and had him say ‘mazel tov’, which was hilarious to see come from the mouth of the world’s most un-Jewish person.”

Thanks ants. Thants.

Despite admitting he “would happily make those ten minute segments till I die”, Popper has ruled out a third series of Look Around You.

Fans of the show, however, still frequently reference jokes from Look Around You, particularly on Twitter, thanking Robert by combining the words thank you and his name Robert to make “Throbert”, a running joke throughout the show.

The creation of this joke was one of many moments of hilarity throughout its production.

“I remember when we came up with that joke. Peter came up with ‘Thanks ants. Thants’ and I did the follow up ‘Bless you ants. Blants.’

“I remember Peter literally falling off his chair, we were both on the floor laughing, because we thought it was so funny. ”

“There was constant laughter.”