Today, we’re going to go down a particularly odd rabbit hole, even for this site. On the plus side: here is a 15 year old mystery, definitively solved.
So let us take a trip to my favourite comedy of the 2000s, Look Around You. Specifically, the DVD commentary on the first episode of Series 2, Music. But hey, Peter Serafinowicz, was Music really meant to be your first episode?
SERAFINOWICZ: This wasn’t meant to be our first episode, was it?
POPPER: No, and a lot of people on the net sussed that as well, didn’t they?
SERAFINOWICZ: Yeah. I don’t know, we…
POPPER: We were going to start with Sport.
SERAFINOWICZ: We were going to start with Sport, but… yeah, we changed it, didn’t we? Maybe it was a bit of a mistake to start with this one, cos it’s such a different one…
POPPER: I wonder if we should have started with the next one, Health. Medibot.1
SERAFINOWICZ: Yeah, probably.
Discussion about transmission orders is like catnip to me. I am the person who wrote this particular monstrosity, after all. And personally speaking, I think Serafinowicz is correct here. I love Music, but – Live Final aside – it’s definitely the most format-breaking of the episodes. It feels weird to break your format when you haven’t even established it yet.2
Still, this conversation rings a very particular bell. Back in 2005 when the show was broadcast, I was hanging around on the forum NOTBBC, and I remember a conversation that I’m fairly certain is one of those Robert Popper is referring to. And because NOTBBC has archives online stretching right back to 2005, we can actually read exactly what that conversation was, rather than it being lost to the mists of time.3
To recap then. The episode order of Series 2 as finally broadcast was Music, Health, Sport, Food, Computers, and Live Final. But theories were already swirling about the originally intended episode order on NOTBBC; take a look at this post, on the thread about the fifth episode broadcast, Computers:
Subject: Re: Look Around You: Computers
Posted by ‘rico’ on 10:39 02/Mar/05 :My theory is that the order in which the finalists of the competition were mentioned at the end were the order in which they were intended to be broadcast.
Sure enough, here’s that key sequence from the fifth episode Computers, which recaps every previous Invention of the Year finalist:4
We already know from the commentary that Sport was intended to be the first episode. If the above is correct, we can easily discern the original intended broadcast order: Sport, Health, Music, Food, Computers, and Live Final. Which is similar to the final broadcast order, except Sport and Music are switched round.
All of which makes perfect sense… but involves a certain amount of conjecture. But there’s one final way we can confirm all this. Back to that NOTBBC thread, and this post:
Subject: Re: Look Around You: Computers
Posted by DC on 20:22 02/Mar/05 :I have vague recollection of the shows on the press release originally being in a different order (with Music definitely being mid series) so this does seem possible. I assume they were looking for the “Little Mouse” reference to come first to pull in viewers from the first series?
Which is rather mysterious. Because that press release is still online, dated the 11th January 2005, and lists the shows in their final broadcast order:
“Shot with the same particular brand of humour as the first series – and presented with aplomb by the very talented Peter Packard, Jack Morgan, Pam Bachelor and Pealy Maghti – the enthusiastic team of presenters offers an insight into what life might be like in the year 2000 in the worlds of music, health, sport, music, food and computers5.”
Here’s the thing: that press release was changed after publication. And here’s proof. Take a look at this forum thread on Cook’d and Bomb’d, with a post dated 17th January 2005, which quotes that same press release:
“Shot with the same particular brand of humour as the first series – and presented with aplomb by the very talented Peter Packard, Jack Morgan, Pam Bachelor and Pealy Maghti – the enthusiastic team of presenters offers an insight into what life might be like in the year 2000 in the worlds of sport, health, music, food and computers6.”
And that order in the original version of the press release matches up exactly with the order as given in the episode Computers. Case, as far as I’m concerned, closed: this was definitely intended to be the original running order for the series.
* * *
All of which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is highly fascinating. But if the above was the only thing to talk about here, then not even I would have bothered writing this post. However, there is an added complication which makes all this rather more confusing… and is the main cause of a mystery which has lingered for 15 years.
The press release quoted above is dated the 11th January, which originally mentioned Sport as the first episode. The actual first episode, Music, was broadcast on the 31st January – just three weeks later. All of which indicates that this change in episode order happened relatively late on in the whole process. Moreover, the incorrect episode order being present in the Invention of the Year sequence in Computers also indicates a very late change.
But hey, that doesn’t matter, right? Episode orders are changed all the time, aren’t they? Indeed, yes, they are. In my job working in TV channel playout, episode orders being changed round is absolutely routine. This is far from a rare occurrence. It seems odd to be making such a big thing about it.
Except for one thing. Because if this change was so last-minute, there is something very odd in the final, broadcast episodes. Because Look Around You set themselves an additional complication by pointing exactly what the next episode would be… in-vision.
Let me remind you of how the first episode Music ended, as transmitted:
PAM: Well, next week, one of us will be having plastic surgery right here on the programme, as we take a look at the world and the future of Health.
If this episode had just been switched around from third to first without any futher tinkering done, then Pam and Pealy would have pointed the fourth episode Food, not Health.
The same issue affects the second episode:
JACK: We’ll be back the same time next week, when we give you a ringside seat to the world and future of sport. So don’t miss it!
With the original episode order, Jack would have originally pointed Music, not Sport.
Finally, the third episode:
JACK: Next week, we’ll be taking a tantalising look at the world and the future of food. So make sure you make a reservation!
As this was originally going to go out first, Jack would have pointed Health, not Food.
So: what’s the deal? The obvious answer is that the show simply grabbed all the different Next Week sections, and just re-edited the episodes to stick the correct ones on. But this quickly shows itself to be false; nothing would match between the episodes, not least people’s outfits. And most obviously, if this was the case, Jack would suddenly be in his unpleasant make-up at the end of Music. This most definitely isn’t the correct answer.
So, were there reshoots? This seems very possible, and indeed it was suggested by someone at the time:
Subject: Re: Look Around You: Computers
Posted by Stonesy on 08:41 04/Mar/05 :
On 13:30 03/Mar/05, Steve Williams wrote:
> On 21:40 02/Mar/05, Simon IUFGN wrote:
> > Hadn’t Sport been talked about before as the opener? I’d wondered if they’d been swapped round after filming, but aren’t the next programmes all previewed in the ‘right’ order at the end?
>
> Yes, and in vision with several members of the cast in shot, which would surely have been more complicated to redo than simply shuffling round the clips in the trailer, which would surely have been a piece of piss to do.
>
At the end of the first one they cut to a close up of Jack Morgan telling us what next weeks will be about. This probably was done later.
Something always bugged me about this idea, though. Not least, if they’d had to reshoot the end of Health, that was quite an extensive make-up job on Robert Popper to recreate. Also, as evidenced from the first part of this article, the change in episode order was clearly decided quite late: there wasn’t even an awful lot of time for reshoots.
Which leaves one further possibility. It’s one I suspected… but had no proof of. So bless Robert Popper for recently indulging my stupid question, and finally giving us closure on this INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT ISSUE:
Ha! No. We did links for all the eps at the end of each one I think, just in case we swapped them order. Does that make sense? And also – why?!
— Robert Popper (@robertpopper) February 13, 2020
So there is your answer. They recorded multiple versions of the final links, in order to allow for different episode orders, and then just switched in one of the alternate takes in once they decided they were going for a different order. And there is a 15 year old mystery, finally solved.
Though the completist part of me really wants to see those alternate links which were never used, you know…
MED-I-BOT! ↩
Having Sport go out first would also make sense for another reason – it contains the “Thanks ants / Thants” joke. That version of the joke going out in the third episode always felt a bit strange, being a straightforward replication of the famous Series 1 moment – the show had already moved past it. ↩
There are also an awful lot of posts by me under the name ‘moss’, where I am either incorrect and annoying, or correct and annoying. Whether I’ve changed much in the last 15 years is left as an exercise for the reader. ↩
Incidentally, the music on this sequence is my favourite in the whole of Look Around You. A clean but shortened version is used on the extras menu of the Series 2 DVD, but I would bloody love to have a full length copy. Sadly, I’ve scoured both Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz’s SoundCloud pages, and while there are some gems there – this is amazing – that particular music isn’t among them. Damn. ↩
Emphasis mine. ↩
I said emphasis mine, just pay attention, OK? ↩
One comment
Si on 15 February 2020 @ 6pm
Oh, completely with you on that final paragraph.
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