Sixteen reasons why Horrible Histories was such a hit
On Friday 29 November I’m off to BAFTA with a legion of writers, performers, costume designers and history experts to celebrate the Honorary Award for Horrible Histories.
I wrote around 100 songs over ten years from 2009 and saw close-up how it evolved from just another kids’ TV sketch show to one of the biggest hits of the last two decades.
I’ve come up with 15 reasons why the show was more popular than anything else I’ve ever worked on.
Many reasonably successful shows will have had a few of these. Quite a few programmes I’ve worked on had more but still fizzled out after a pilot or series.
There’s no perfect formula for working this out, if there was we’d all be using it. Hopefully this helps.
1 Terry Deary
In the beginning, before any TV versions (and there’s been more than one), before the internet was public, before the Channel Tunnel, PlayStation and Oasis, during the millennium of Elizabeth the First and Charles the Second, performer and drama teacher Terry Deary began writing childrens’ history books.
These concentrated less on Kings and Queens and Wars and Empires, more on the people of the time – how they lived, what they ate and, most hilariously for kids and adults alike, how they got rid of their human waste products.
Terry’s tomes had already sold millions before the first episode aired. Basing your show on a successful book series is no guarantee of a hit, but it certainly didn’t do any harm.
2 Caroline Norris
Horrible Histories had already been tried as a TV animation, featuring two characters travelling through time portals and back into history. The joint USA-ITV production began in 2000 and ended in the same year.
Fresh from her successful stint producing the first series of Armstrong and Miller’s sketch show on BBC1, producer Caroline Norris arrived at Lion TV with a vision of bringing Monty Python and Blackadder style surrealism to Terry’s books.
The BBC was already famous for its lavishly dressed costume dramas. Here was a brilliant pitch for a kids show – Costume Comedy.
3 The Cast
When Caroline and director Dominic Brigstocke put the team together they picked a group of mostly unknown performers. Who could have guessed that Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe Douglas, Mat Baynton, Larry Rickard, Ben Willbond and Jim Howick would become the most successful comedy writers and performers of their generation – not just individually but together on Horrible Histories, Yonderland and Ghosts?
The chemistry is apparent from episode one but I understand began the first day they turned up for rehearsals. And it’s never gone away.
4 The Theme Tune
Come on, as soon as you saw that headline you started singing it. Richie Webb is best known for his brilliant tunes (of which more later) but he’s also a great comedy lyricist, and that 30 seconds of high punk energy and Lehreresque lyricism is all his own work.
5 Lion TV
Lion have stuck with the show and pretty much the same format for 15 years. When the original cast left after five series there was a brief attempt to fill the gap with celebrities (many of whom were begging to be in it) – Rowan Atkinson, Ben Miller, Kevin Eldon. But by series seven they were back to doing what they knew best – sketches, songs, funny costumes and poo.
In addition, the show continues to be one of the few remaining on TV that actively helps new writers and performers develop their professional careers.
6 Greg Jenner
For this show to work, it had to be built on the foundations of rock solid fact. A team of studious and talented historians was required to deliver as many facts as possible to us writers, especially those that lent themselves to humour.
That team was called Greg Jenner, and it still amazes me that he’s only one person. His notes were copious but always thorough and relevant – and funny. Greg is now a history star in his own right, with You’re Dead To Me – the best and greatest titled History podcast in the universe.
7 The BBC
Who makes TV shows these days? International companies come and go, but the good old BBC is still plodding away. People think of the BBC as a giant homogenous behemoth but the Childrens’ TV department sits on its own in a broom cupboard on the 14th floor and magics incredible telly shows out of thin air and thinner budgets.
8 The Wardrobe Department
I imagine the costume budget for one episode of Bridgerton would be enough to pay for an entire series of everything on Horrible Histories. The show looked great from the opening moments of Episode One and the quality has never wavered. It began with a shoe string budget, although they probably couldn’t even afford to buy a shoe string. Creative decisions, and begging borrowing and stealing ensured the authentic look.
9 Make up and Props
If anything is likely to break the spell of your enjoyment it’s a prop that doesn’t look like a real thing. Watching the show you probably hardly notice the swords, sceptres, rats, bedsores and human waste. That’s because they all look correct. Again, in those early series the creative genius of the behind-the-scenes teams was vital to the show’s success.
10 Birmingham Stage Company
Long before Horrible Histories was a hit TV show, it was a popular theatrical production for kids. And still is. The latest Christmas show at Ally Pally is booking and filling up right now. TV gave the live shows a boost, of course, but thanks to the incredible and energetic Neal Foster the famous HH logo has been a mainstay of tube and bus advertising for decades.
All those months of the year when the show isn’t on TV, if you live in London you’ll have been as aware of its existence as Phantom of the Opera.
11 Teachers
Thank you teachers, for using our material to teach children to enjoy history. I can’t tell you how many University history graduates have said to me how what was otherwise a boring subject to them at school came to life thanks to being shown clips from Horrible Histories.
I’m occasionally invited into schools to talk about writing funny songs. For someone who has spent most of his career writing and performing gags forgotten in an instant, this has been the highlight of my professional career
12 Rattus
Veteran comedy writer and Private Eye cartoonist Giles Pilbrow is another Duracell bunny of energy who script edited (and packed with jokes) the first five series. Giles is Comedy Renaissance man – writer, producer, TV company executive and creator of the world’s most famous animated talking rat.
13 Ben Ward
Not many people who were there at the start are still delivering the goods but Richie Webb and Ben Ward are the two great mainstays. Nobody knows Childrens’ TV better than Ben. The first time I worked with him in the 1990s Ben told me he hadn’t had a holiday in 11 years, which I later came to understand explained his extraordinary output (including showrunning Danger Mouse). If you don’t believe me have a look at his CV online next time you have 20 minutes to spare.
14 Parents could watch it too
Sneaky eh? Caroline said they wanted to create a show that kids could share with their parents. And it ended up working both ways – imagine the joy on daddy’s face when he was able to explain that this Charles Dickens song was based on the tunes of his favourite band The Smiths. This helped to make viewing the show a family experience, back in that long forgotten era when TV shows were only available at a particular time of day and everyone had to watch together. (Note to self – pitch a song idea about ye olde days when families watched TV at the same time)
15 The Songs
We often ask ourselves “why we were put on this earth?” For me, if the answer to that question was for nothing else than to rhyme “Can you imagine it? I was the last Plantagenet” on a kids’ TV show then I’ll settle for that.
Anything else? Maybe one more thing…
16 Luck
Yep, we got lucky. I have no explanation for that.