If you had this misfortune of sitting through the first episode of Morgan Spurlock’s new series New Britannia on Sky Atlantic last night, then we wholly sympathise with you.
In short it wasn’t very good and pretty disappointing and for us at least once again demonstrated the extreme difficulty Americans have understanding and identifying the difference between Britain and England, more specifically the difference between Britain and London. This basic failing was clear for everyone to see, in fact Morgan recently admitted during an interview that he didn’t have time during the shoot for the 10 episode series to visit either Wales or Ireland, yet the show is supposed to be an in-depth look at Britain.
We did learn something new which was the revelation of the existence of a ‘British accent’, however no real explanation or even a sample was provided as to what exactly a ‘British accent’ sounds like. As Scots we were also pretty depressed when we read an interview with the documentary filmmaker for TV Choice, who posed the banal question ‘Do you find Scots grumpy?’, to which Spurlock replied:
I didn’t find them any grumpier than any other Brits we met. But it was funny when we showed up in Scotland on a fantastic, sunny day, because the Scots seemed to hate it! They were much happier the next day, when it was freezing cold and p***ing with non-stop rain, because that was how they felt it should be!
That’s right Morgan we just despise the sun, we loathe it’s very existence, we’re like ginger headed vampires who simply burst into flames when sunlight makes contact with our skin, which is why we all wear heavy tweed jackets, kilts and love nothing more than standing in the rain smiling through our rotten teeth, while we count out our gold coins.
HMS Friday 