Horrible Histories Redux

 A while back I accepted a request by LDEJrufffanreturns to cover an obscure show from 2001. Looking back on it, I feel I didn't do the best job at discussing it, and ran with a misconception that is hard to overlook. I have nothing better to discuss right now, so I'm gonna take the time to right this wrong.

Background

Horrible Histories is the first adaptation of the British book series of the same name, by Terry Deary. Basically it is an educational series that portrays persons and events in funny ways.

The proximity between this and the creation of this series is not very known, but there is one thing consistent between either, the publisher. Scholastic handled distribution of the books, and as some may know already, they had their own production division. They had overseen stuff like Goosebumps, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Animorphs, which people only really remember for one particular reason.

But then again there's a stark contrast between corporations and authors, so I imagine some things got lost in the fold. Along with Scholastic, the show was also produced by Mike Young Productions. They had also produced Clifford, among other things. Mike Young Productions was best known for producing a glut of etcetera programs for many networks, many of which were international co-productions.

Basically tax shelter movies well before those happened. This was also the first show to be co-financed by Telegael, whom Mike Young worked with for later productions.

It's not exactly known where this show wound up in the United States, if at all, but to correct one big mistake, it never aired on ABC. It aired on ABC... the Australian ABC.

There is one other thing I wanna bring up, the show had two English dubs, the American one and the British one, but oddly enough the latter only took effect on two prominent characters.

To demonstrate, check out this video I made comparing them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUGemaNbXjo&t=121s

Guess the Brits really favored Billy West and Jess Harnell, or they only needed to change two characters to fulfill British standards.

The American dub is rather hard to find, while the British dub is in greater circulation, and by that, I mean I can find one dub easily on YouTube for free. One American dub episode had surfaced, and it looked as though the episode was screened by educational distributor Clearvue.

The show itself

The show featured a rather dry listing of actors, Jess Harnell, Billy West and Cree Summer. This was a practice common with most Mike Young shows recorded in America, using only a handful of actors who had enough range to cover that.

Hearing two very experienced actors, it sounds like the epitome of phoning it in. They do not sound like they want to be doing this. Now it kinda works for Billy West, who offers a dry delivery whether intentional or not, but Cree Summer isn't as fortunate in this. So I guess this is is why she was redubbed for the UK release, because her actress, even if she was just the daughter of Mike Young, did a better job.

Or maybe the luxury of hearing characters of different dialects together helps make them stand out more.

The key principle of Horrible Histories is kept, with the addition of two constant characters, Stitch and Mo. One fancies himself a comedian, the other is partly his conscious, or just the smart one. Episodes, or at least most that I've seen, follow a simple format. Stitch and Mo get put on the spot by a snobbish douche, the narrator sends them back to a time period relevant to their situation, we learn something, and they take that knowledge with them.

It works for something like an educational series, and the history portion of Horrible Histories is thankfully maintained, but I dunno, the execution of it kinda dulled any staying power it would've had. Because of its educational nature, it basically gave them a permission slip to talk about enticing subjects like shit. Though I've seen more gratuitous use of turds, had this made it to the states, I think it's bound to drive some people nuts.

But whatever, for an edutainment series, if you get educated and get entertained, at least it did its job, at the consequence of being neglected. I feel like I learned something, but the entertainment value is lacking. Maybe if more time was put into fleshing out Stitch and Mo, their plights could have far more weight to them. Or maybe if they cool it with the rimshots every time Stitch cracks a joke.

But that's not all, is it?

The one thing that stood out to me about this show is the animation. Now this, this is special. Limited animation, with characters that literally snap into place when they move, and a rather mixed art direction. I have rarely seen anything like it in shows from the new millenium. I mean, it's rare for the show to do more ambitious takes so I guess they understood how bad it may play out.

It was about a year before flash animation in television truly took off, the only thing up at the time was John Callahan's Quads. But, that's okay, it still looks a hell of a lot better than Turning Red. I'd rather see poor art direction over bean smiles in the third dimension, as well as the misfortune of seeing a very shitty movie.

So, where do I stand?

It may not have been implied, but I don't consider the show to be that good. But, it's a negligible kind of bad, it's not gonna turn any heads, there's no need to tend to it, it's not even so bad it's good, let alone a certain extent of bad. It was a blip in television history, and otherwise made because it was cheap to do so. Scholastic were more bent on getting a show based on one of their properties out, for the sake of exposure to their books, I guess it worked, who knows?

But if you wanna get your fix on Horrible Histories and don't want to hunt down the books, there was an adaptation made in 2015, itself a remake of a sketch comedy iteration from 2009, lest you'd object to watching kids shows.