All language subtitles for Cunk.on.Britain.s01e03.[MPup]

Today, Britain stands
at a fork in its crossroads.

And its people are asking questions.

Now we've got our country back,
what actually is it?

Who are we? And why?

The best way to find out where
Britain's heading

is to look behind us into something
called "history" -

a sort of rear view mirror
for time.

So that's where I'm going.

Back there.

It's a journey that'll take me
the length and width of the country.

On my odyssey, I'll be starting
sentences in one location...

..and finishing them in another.

And looking at some of the biggest
faces in British history,

and asking other people's
faces about them.

If Shelley's one of the greatest
poets in English literature,

how come nobody gives
a shit about him today?

That's a complicated question.

But it's not just a story of things,

it's also a story of people sitting
or standing on things.

All of it taking place in this
skepterred isle we call home.

So join me, Philomena Cunk,
as I take you right up

the history of The United Britain
of Great Kingdom.

This...is Cunk on Britain.

Last time, we saw how the British
leaped out of Britain itself

and sailed the world in boats.

This week we're examining
the 19th century.

This was a time of invention,
industry, discovery,

empire building, urban squalor,
sexual hypocrisy, optimism,

statues, painting, photograph,

him, her, them and tree.

It was a time when British
creativity was at its peak,

bringing us everything
from great works of art

to great works of train.

A time when Britain very much
entered

the third episode of its history.

It's the early 19th century

and Britain is in the grip
of the Georgian Era,

a time when all English Kings
had to be called George.

There was George Three, George Two,
George Four and George One,

though not necessarily
in that order.

The Georgian Era saw the birth
of a new artistic movement -

The Romantics.

They weren't like the old romantics,

which is like when your dad buys
your mum a box of Black Magic

from the service station when it
isn't even her birthday,

and they weren't like the
New Romantics,

which were all synthesisers
and wind machines.

Instead, they were poets
and artists

whose names are still familiar
today.

Wordsworth.

Shelley.

Blake.

And the other ones.

To find out more,
I went to speak to an expert.

Who was Ron?

Among the Romantics, you mean?

Yeah.

Um... William Godwin was
quite wrong.

He believed that there should be no
laws at all in society.

No, who's Ron?

Ron? Uh, is there a Ron?

Yeah, the one that wrote all
the poems and signed them "By Ron".

Yeah, that...
That was his family name - Byron.

Lord George Byron.

Oh. right! OK.

Yeah.

Who was the man from Nantucket
that By Ron wrote about in his poem?

I don't remember that poem.

It's the one that goes "There was
a young man from Nantucket".

Is that Byron?
I think so.

It was really good.

So how did it end?

Byron was like a rock star.

He was sexy, like Mick Jagger,

brooding, like Kurt Cobain

and he had brown hair,
like Harry Styles.

Little wonder he's still considered

the number one dead romantic
in history.

Which was your favourite
of the Romantics?

Probably, um, Byron, I would think.

Byron was the bad-boy
of the Romantic poets.

It's thought that he probably
slept with his sister

and with most other women
in England.

He was your favourite?

Yeah.
The one who slept with his sister?

Well, it's not... I mean, I...

It's not on that basis
that I like him.

I was just giving you
a bit of background on him.

Would that have shocked people

or was everyone sleeping
with their sister back then?

I think it was...

He spent much of his life in exile
and...

Where's exile?

Well, in his case it was
in Italy, mainly.

And he wrote Don Juan, which was one
of the greatest pieces

of particularly rhyming poetry
in English literature.

It must've been a good book

if you can overlook the fact
he slept with his sister.

But not all women of the age

were Byron's sister who he was
sleeping with.

Some of them were other women,
like this one.

What exactly was Jane Austen?

Jane Austen was a woman
from Hampshire who wrote novels.

Is that it?

Yes, that's it.

Absolutely.

Austen wrote novels,
which are books,

which look like this on the outside,
and this on the inside,

filled with words it's almost
impossible to care about.

When are they going to translate
Jane Austen's books
into proper English?

You know, from like ancient English.

Because they're sort of hard
to concentrate on, aren't they,

now that we've got, like,
phones and stuff.

Well, she's not that hard, really.

Those sentences have sometimes got
some nice balancing clauses

with a lot of humour in them.

Why do they keep making
Jane Austen's books

into films and TV shows?

There's only about five of them,
isn't there?

Whereas, like, there's 50 Mr Men
books

and they haven't done
all of those yet.

I think there are lots
of reasons for that.

People love the love stories.

They like the costumes.

They're also wonderful books with
lots of opportunities for humour.

Are you talking about Jane Austen
or Mr Men?

Probably both.

Yeah. Who's your favourite Mr Man?

Mr Tickle, probably.

Yeah. I love Mr Tickle.

Jane Austen died in 1817

only to be reincarnated 200 years
later in the form of this banknote.

But important though she was,

she wasn't the most significant
woman of the century.

That honour belonged
to Queen Victoria.

Queen Victoria is often portrayed
as old and grumpy.

It's where the term
"Victoria Cross" comes from.

But she wasn't always a sour,
disapproving old woman.

She was once a sour,
disapproving baby.

Queen Victoria was born in 1819,
in the usual way, out of a woman.

It was hard to tell that this infant
would grow up to be Queen

because her crown hadn't yet formed.

It was just hair,

which must've been a relief to her
mother as she was pushing her out.

As well as looking miserable,
her other hobby was fashion.

Even at an early age,
she was dressing like a cross

between a disillusioned Lord Mayor
and an angry hen.

In 1837, aged 18,
Victoria became Queen.

Her reign was to be a period
of great industrial, cultural,

scientific, and political change,

but the main thing people asked her
about was why she was still single

and when she was getting married.

Eventually, to shut everyone up,
she fell in love with
her cousin, Albert.

Prince Albert was German,

but Victoria was willing to overlook
that because they were in love.

And because most of her family
were German, too.

Their untrammelled sexual passion is
evident in every photograph of them.

What no-one saw coming was
that during Victoria's reign,

Britain would be turned upside-down
by an avalanche

of hurricane proportions,
called progress.

This was the Industrial Revelation.

And the very first winds
of that changequake

detonated in the almost
pre-historic world of transport.

The Victorians had
horse-drawn buses,

but you never see horses drawing
anything these days, do you?

When did they lose
the ability to draw?

Is it when their hands
sort of turned into hooves?

When we talk about horse-drawn
buses, we're not really talking

about horses drawing buses,
but pulling them along.

So that... That's the meaning of the
word "draw" in this instance.

Oh. Right.

And that stopped, really,
once we had the railways

and then even more the engines.

Engines ran on a mysterious
new element

the Victorians had discovered
called steam.

It was a big deal, wasn't it,

when they got trains
to run on steam.

Where did they get the steam that
powered the trains back then?

Did they have to sort of mine
it from underground?

Or did they get it from the sky?

Well, you can actually make
steam by boiling water.

So what they're doing is using
the coal to boil the water

and make the steam that way.

Right, so clouds are made
of boiling water?

Why don't planes boil then
when we fly through them?

I think you probably want to
speak to a meteorologist...

Oh... ..about the clouds.

OK.

As well as carrying steam, trains
could move people huge distances,

and they worked much harder,
and faster, than horses.

And unlike horses, they've got a big
smiling face on the front,

and the voice of Ringo Starr.

Soon the inevitable happened
and mankind bred with trains,

creating half-human, half-train
super-engineer
Isambard Kingdom Brunel,

who kicked the Industrial Revolution
into overdrive.

Why is Brunel considered one
of the greatest Britons of all time?

Brunel built so many different
things - towns, canals, bridges.

I mean he was responsible for many
of the things

that happened
during the Industrial Revolution.

He really took our country forward
in terms of technological progress.

Where does he rank compared to,
say, Nick Knowles?

He's definitely further up the list,
on my list...

Nick Knowles or Brunel?

Brunel.

I suppose we haven't given
Nick Knowles a proper chance yet,
have we?

We don't know what
he might come up with yet.

This is one of Brunel's
most famous achievements -

the Clifton Suspension Bridge,
Britain's first white-knuckle ride.

Although disappointingly flat
compared to today's rollercoasters,

millions still flock to Bristol
every year

just to queue up and have a go
on it.

As well as bridges and tunnels,

the Industrial Revolution
brought factories.

Factories were cavernous halls of
noise and machinery,

dirty and dangerous environments
without even basic Wi-Fi

and only the most rudimentary
break-out spaces.

But they were changing
Britain forever.

These days, no-one works in these
factories except ghosts,

and even then,
they only work night shifts.

Workers did long, thankless hours,
with no breaks and low pay

in a squalid
and threatening environment.

Conditions unthinkable today to
anyone who isn't a junior doctor.

The Industrial Revolution was
so frenetic,

a man called Charles Babbage
got carried away

and invented the computer
far too early.

Modern computers are tiny, but this
was as big as a Transit van.

It was even bigger than the 1990s
one your dad's got in the loft

and won't throw away in case the bin
men find all his bank details

and mucky jpegs.

Hello. Who are you?

I'm Doron Swade.

I'm a historian of computing

and I was responsible for building
this engine.

So what games does it have?

It doesn't have any games.

It must have, like, some basic
games,

like Mario Kart or Snake or...
I'm afraid not.

..or Patience,
like the shittest one.

It must have Patience.

I'm afraid it doesn't.

It doesn't have any games?
None whatever.

It just does
mathematical calculation.

So where's the screen
on this computer?

The screen, again,
is part of the electronic era.

This has no screens.

As it happens, you don't need
to read the numbers

because it prints them
automatically for you.

It's a shame, isn't it, that it
doesn't have a screen

because then you could turn it
upside-down

and the numbers would become
rude words.

You know, like with a calculator?

Yes.

Have you ever done that?

I haven't but I know what you mean.

You've done this
but you haven't done that? Correct.

Babbage never foresaw the terrible
consequences of his invention -

a machine that would autocorrect his
name to "cabbage" every single time.

The Victorian age was an era of huge
and inventive leaps.

But one man was about to take
too large a step for many,

Charles Darwin.

Darwin was born the son of a doctor,

but using his own theories,
soon evolved into a scientist.

He was faskinated by nature,

and decided to find out more about
it by going to sea on a beagle.

Darwin, uh, sailed off on his
science mission on a beagle,

didn't he?

He did, yeah, he went off for five
years on The Beagle.

Yeah. A small ship which...

It was a ship? ..circumnavigated,
yeah, circumnavigated the world...

Not a dog?

No. So it wasn't a ship that evolved
into a dog?

Certainly not, no.

On his journey, he visited
the Noel Gallagher's Islands

and came up with a theory -

that animals that were dead were
less likely to reproduce

than ones that were alive.

Talk me through the events
that led up to the moment

where Charles Darwin
invented the monkey.

Darwin didn't...invent the monkey.

No-one invented a monkey.

OK, well, talk me through the events
which led up the moment

where Charles Darwin
didn't invent the monkey.

Charles Darwin saw monkeys as
potential progenitors of humans,

ie, we could have evolved from them.

When they put monkeys in zoos,

how long does it take for them
to turn human?

Well, it's not really to do
with the zoo.

Alright,
so say we kept one in the wild,

how long would it take for that
monkey to grow,

like, a nose or ears?

Well, they have noses and ears
that are perfectly functional.

Like a man's nose.

Those apes and monkeys
don't need a human nose.

It wouldn't do them any good.

What's the fastest
evolution could happen?

Like, how fast could you turn
a pig into a cow?

A pig into a cow?

You're never going to be able
to turn a pig into a cow.

Why would you want to turn
a pig into a cow?

Pigs are quite good at being pigs

and cows are relatively
good at being cows.

Why do you want to turn
a pig into a cow?

Just to see what it's like.

In 1859, he wrote a book
about his theory

called The Oranges Of The Peaches,

which described how oranges
have evolved from peaches.

Controversially, the book claimed
that man was descended from monkeys,

a twist most of the readers
were unprepared for.

The idea that man and ape were close
relatives was considered

both hilarious and shocking -

a bit like Graham Norton,

but with more profound consequences
for all humankind.

Eventually Darwin evolved himself

into a corpse.

He was buried here, in Westminster
Abbey, before evolving again,

into worms and dust.

Meanwhile, Britain itself was
evolving into an empire.

The British Empire was
the biggest the world had ever seen.

It had started back in the days
of Drake and Raleigh,

then expanded when Captain Cook
discovered Australia

when he took the first-ever gap year
working on a beach near Sydney.

With its year-round sunshine
and abundant food,

Australia was deemed the perfect
place to send Britain's murderers.

It was hoped they'd suffer terrible
homesickness

as they lay soaking up the sun.

But there was a dark side

to Britain's ever-increasing
globalisation - slavery.

These days, people pay thousands of
pounds to visit

the sun-kissed islands
of the Caribbean.

But in the 1700s, you could go
there for free,

if you were black
and didn't want to go there.

It was immediately obvious to anyone
that slavery was wrong,

which is why it was only allowed
to continue for hundreds of years.

There were many countries
in the British Empire.

By Victoria's day, the empire bits
were coloured pink on the map,

to remind white Britons what colour
they'd turn if they went there

and stood in the sun too long.

And no bit of the map was pinker
than the Jewel in the Crown - India.

For years, a British business,
the East India Company,

had ruled over India -
and the locals weren't happy.

A corporation running a country is
the sort of thing that

usually happens in a scary science
fiction film, but this was real,

and ages ago, and had all
tea leaves in it instead of lasers.

After a people's rebellion,
the company was replaced

in 1858 by the British monarchy
and the British Raj was born.

Queen Victoria was made
Empress of India in 1877,

a title she was so thrilled by,

she immediately set about never
visiting the Indian continent

at any point in her life.

For some reason, the debate still
rages as to how good

the British Empire actually was.

Was the British Empire
evil like it was in Star Wars?

I think the important point here is
that yes, many people would

have seen the British Empire
as being an evil empire,

whilst at the same
time many people -

unsurprisingly,
most of them British -

would have seen it as something that
was a beacon of light,

so I think that here lies one of the
key debates

in British imperial history -
was it good or was it bad?

Who was the Darth Vader of the
Empire?

Was it Queen Victoria?

You probably wouldn't have
had anyone

quite as powerful as Darth Vader
as, if you like, a supreme leader.

Erm... What about Luke Skywalker?

I think many people would have
liked to have undertaken

a Skywalker-like role as a saviour,

but there probably weren't too many
of those around.

Chewbacca?

No, I think that's stretching it.

Meanwhile, back home, with machines
doing all the hard work, people had

more free time on their hands than
ever and they needed entertaining.

What sort of music was
popular in Victorian times?

What were the genres?
R&B, soul, rock?

One was, erm, the music hall.

Is music hall the first sort
of music named after a building?

And do you think that was a
big influence on acid house?

Despite the name, music hall wasn't
just music in a hall.

As well as singers, there were
comedians, dancers and variety turns

like on Britain's Got Talent,
but with a few differences.

Back then, audiences enjoyed
the acts for themselves,

rather than asking David Walliams or
Amanda Holden to do it for them.

And because the only way to change
channel in Victorian Times

was to walk up the road to
a different music hall,

the acts could be a lot shitter.

So could you play some
music hall for me now?

Erm, right, well, there were
lots of popular songs

and they liked certain
sorts of rhythms and vamps.

So this was a very popular one,
which goes like this...

HE PLAYS A JAUNTY TUNE

# My old man said follow the van

# And don't dilly-dally
on the way... #

That sort of rhythm...
Hmm. ..was very popular.

So why was that considered
entertaining?

But while commoners enjoyed this
Victorian equivalent of ITV,

posh folk were getting into a
primitive, paper-based form

of television called books, which
streamed content from the page

into your mind's eye.

Books were being
produced in huge numbers.

Perhaps that's why the Victorian era
produced more Victorian writers

than any other period in history.

This is one of them -
Sir Arthur Coning Roddy Doyle,

perhaps the greatest writer of
detective fiction

he could possibly be - the inventor
of Sherlock Holmes.

The first Sherlock Holmes story was
such a hit,

Coning Doyle wrote 55 sequels,

which is four more than
The Fast And The Furious.

Although, in the Sherlock Holmes
stories,

some stuff happens that isn't
skidding.

Since his Victorian origins,
Sherlock Holmes himself has

regenerated many times and in many
different forms throughout history,

from drawings,
to black-and-white man,

to a black-and-white-man in colour,

into a cricketer and even an alien.

But perhaps the best-known Victorian
to put quill to paper

is one of the greatest writists
Britain has ever shat out -

Sir Charles Dickings.

Dickings lived here, in a house,

but he left when the council turned
it into a museum, gift shop

and education centre in his memory.

He became a writer,

and began to create some of the most
time-consuming stories in history.

The names of Dickings' most famous
works are still familiar today.

Nicholas Nickelback.

Great Defecations.

David's Copper Field.

The Picnic Papers.

And his masterpiece...

..Oliver's Twist.

Despite the spoiler in its title,
Oliver's Twist doesn't have a twist

at the end, which, come to think of
it, is a brilliant twist in itself.

That's how clever Dickings was.

BOYS SCREAM

Like many of Dickings' works,

Oliver's Twist exposed the grim
underbelly of Victorian London.

As you can see from this blistering
adaptation,

it's an uncompromising,
searing vision of extreme poverty

and synchronised dancing.

Despite his genius,
Dickings' immortality couldn't last,

and in 1870, he died - forever.

We don't know what his last words
were, or whether he managed

to blurt out "the end" just before
closing his mouth for the last time.

But while Dickings was celebrated,
another Victorian wordsmith

found himself on the
wrong side of the law.

Oscar Wilde was a brilliant writer
and wit,

which is the Victorian word for
"top bantz merchant".

He was persecuted for being gay,

and ended up in Reed-ing Gaol.

Luckily, being a literary man,

he loved reading, and was
so happy he wrote a song about it.

Sadly, it didn't do very well,
because there's no tune to speak of

and, as you can see, he's misspelt
"jail" on the front.

The Victorians treated
Wilde like a sexual deviant

because they were extremely prudish.

In polite society,
clothing was prim and proper.

Even glimpsing an ankle was
considered racy.

So chances are anyone seeing a bum
would've had a stroke.

In fact, the famed Victorian
morality was nothing more than

a hypocritical front -
for one thing,

as these photographs prove,
people still had buttocks and muffs.

Some people even had intercourse.

Victorian London in particular
was a hotbed of vice,

with many a so-called
"respectable gentleman"

paying women for sex
up the East End.

If you were a prostitute in London
in 1888, there were two words

guaranteed to put the fear of god
into you - "Jack"...

..and "the Ripper".

Jack the Ripper was one of the most
antisocial murderers

Britain has ever seen.

Much of the fear of The Ripper was
stirred up by the press.

And by the way
he kept killing people.

The murders brought shame on
19th-century London,

which is why, unlike other prominent
Victorians of the age,

Jack the Ripper has never
appeared on a banknote.

Despite this, he's just as popular
today as he wasn't back then.

You can still go on Ripper
tours around Whitechapel -

a fun way of commemorating
a serial killer,

although committing murders on the
tour itself is lightly discouraged.

Because the culprit himself was
never caught,

there's a lot we still don't
know about Jack the Ripper.

We don't know who he was
or why he did it.

We don't even know if Jack
the Ripper was his real name,

or just a nickname, like 50 Cent.

We don't know when he died,
or if he died.

It's chilling to think Jack the
Ripper could still be alive today,

living somewhere out there,
under his real name.

Maybe he's one of your friends
or neighbours.

Or maybe...he's you.

You'd have no way of knowing.

And that's terrifying.

But it wasn't just prostitutes who
died in Victorian Britain.

So did Victoria's beloved husband
Albert, who succumbed to typhoid

and stomach and bum trouble
in 1861, a mere 125 years

before the first transmission of the
BBC comedy series Brush Strokes.

# Because of you

# These things I do

# Because of you

# Because of you
Ohhh-ohhh... #

Victoria was so heartbroken by
Albert's death,

she spent the rest of her life
wearing black and pulling a face

like Alfred Hitchcock watching a dog
drown.

The grieving queen commissioned
monuments to Albert's memory,

such as the Prince Albert Memorial
and the Royal Albert Hall,

which functioned as both
a concert hall

and a receptacle for Adolf Hitler's
missing bollock.

And then Victoria did what any
widow would,

and went off to the Isle of Wight

to look out of the window
until she died.

Fittingly for a monarch whose reign

had seen many technomalogical
advancements,

moving pictures had
just been invented -

just in time to
capture her funeral -

but, sadly, not in time for her to
enjoy the footage of her funeral.

The entire country came to
a standstill for the procession.

It was as though the British public
weren't just burying a queen,

but an entire era, which they'd
somehow managed to

fit in the box along with her body.

The death of Queen Victoria reduced
the number of women with

a voice in British politics by 100%.

Because in 1901, women did
not have the vote, even though,

at the time, half
the men in Britain were women.

Women were thought of as simple
creatures who could give birth

and raise families,
but couldn't be trusted with

something as complicated as drawing
an X with a pencil.

Today it's unthinkable that
a woman wouldn't be able to vote,

unless she was really hungover or
in her slippers and it was raining,

but back then it was the law.

One woman decided that had
to change.

Emmerdale Pankhurst thought
women could be more than just wives

and mothers, so she deliberately
only had five children,

leaving her loads of time for
politics.

She founded the
suffragette movement.

These women were tough
and prepared to fight.

Like Wonder Woman, but with sleeves.

The suffragettes
protested in creative ways.

Some chained themselves to
important buildings,

rather than the kitchen sink.

Others went on hunger strike,

kick-starting the food detox craze
that continues to this day.

One suffragette, Emily Davison,
threw herself under a horse

to get the vote.

But the vote wasn't under a horse.

It was in a little wooden
booth in a primary school.

But, to be fair,
women wouldn't have known that.

The suffragettes wanted the vote
so badly,

they were prepared to die for it.

Nobody knows why.

Maybe they imagined it was
better in here than it actually is.

Maybe they thought there'd be games
or sandwiches in here.

If they'd known it was just
a pencil on a shoelace,

they might not have bothered.

Eventually, women did get the vote
after the next bit of history,

but I can't skip past the next bit,
because the next bit is war,

and men will find that interesting.

Next time, we move into the early
20th century,

a period when TV was invented,

making life actually worth living
for the first time.

And also, a time when Britain fought
two World Wars, but no World Cups.

Why were all the British soldiers
in World War I called Tommy?

Was that just a coincidence?