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I am delighted that my kids have very good comedy taste - where did they get that from? Oh their mum.
Because kids love to repeat view/listen to stuff, which means you have to ingest it too and so if something they like is bad then (I imagine) that makes your life Hell.
Phoebe loves Flo and Joan, as you may recall and I think I may have heard some of those songs more than Flo and Joan have. But they stand repeated listens. Phoebe is also on about her sixth cycle of the Simpsons and admittedly some of the more recent ones are not as good as the classic first 100 or so, but there's still much to enjoy.
Phoebe used to be into Horrible Histories (now having graduated to Ghosts - though she also loves 30 Rock, Schitt's Creek and the American Office), but Ernie found it too scary. Which was weird because he was 28 years old at the time.
He has now overcome his fears and if anything loves the gruesome stuff as much as the comedy and the history. Interestingly he will only watch the ones with the original cast though. I don't know how many times he's seen it, but it's on every morning at breakfast and again, I couldn't be happy about that. It's a brilliantly funny show, with strong performances from its exceptional cast, properly brilliant sketches and catchy songs.
It's clear that the writers and cast were happy to amuse themselves (or if you are being generous you could say they were thinking of the mums and dads) because there are loads of musical references that the kids will have no chance of getting.
It's a brilliant musical parody, full of great facts and also some jokes that even adults might only spot on the 6th casual viewing "You can call him Ol" was the one I noticed today.
I also love how the main cast who have tiny roles in these songs really put everything into them. They must have had so much fun and then look what came out of that friendship!
Though I do feel a bit for some of the other main cast who didn't end up in the Yonderland/Ghosts gang. That must be a bit annoying. I feel bad enough that I was never asked to be in any of the sketches, even though they did have parts for several 1990s comedians - the League of Gentlemen playing characters not unlike the never popular Lee and Herring characters Seahand and Zemquist (100 bonus points if you remember them - they definitely didn't put all of them out, but now I wonder if they put any of them out).
Show business leaves some of us behind. Of course the actor Kevin Eldon is in it.
Anyway, you don't need to have a kid or be a kid to watch this show.
It's all up on iplayer, even the episodes that my son disdains.
I see the Ghosts lot as their generation's Monty Python and Horrible Histories is very much a (probably superior) version of Jones and Palin's Complete and Utter History of Britain.
The audiobooks (and I presume the books) are not as good, but we are currently listening those on the way to school and back and they're still OK. Those early TV series are just a wonderful collision of writing, song-writing and acting talent (I think Dave Cohen is responsible for a lot of the songs).
And also history advisor, Greg Jenner's cameo
