The new show from Horrible Histories may be the most unlikely comedy spinoff since Frasier, but what a glorious romp The Greek playwright Aeschylus died when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. The Roman hunchback Diodorus expired when a doctor tried to straighten his spine. These are two of my favourite exits from Stupid Deaths, a recurring sketch in Horrible Histories. For a decade, it has skewed British children’s (and their parents’) sense of the past so much that we can’t list the kings and queens of England, but we all know that the boxer Theagenes of Thasos was giving his rival’s statue a good thumping when it toppled over and did him in. And now, in Ghosts (BBC One), there is a country house called Button Hall filled with ancestral spirits who died stupid deaths. There is a scoutmaster (Jim Howick) with an arrow through the neck. There is a caveman who speaks better English than Donald Tusk. We don’t know how he died, but the safe money says it was glue poisoning from his appliquéd facial hair. Continue reading...
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