History Bites

Rick Green, co-creator of the wonderful Canadial show, The Red Green Show, branched out in the early 90's to create and star in this "bet you thought you knew what happened" history program. Combining a very good ensemble cast along with the use of humor to get points across, History Bites takes the premise of what might we know about certain points in history if television had been there to record and report it?

Would the Hun really turn out to be a bunch of misunderstood guys who really thought they were doing a good thing by slaughtering thousands as their horde moved across Asia and Europe? Was Genghis just trying to live up to his father's image?

Were the Norsemen who conquered western France shocked when the French just gave them the land and told them the now THEY had to care for the population.

History Bites is a funny show. It should be mandatory viewing for 5th through 8th graders in all schools to help them understand that what me might think of as historical fact is often just what the winners wrote, not what happened. And humor is the best way to get across this kind of information.

Too bad the Canadians keep it to themselves. Or, too bad US networks like The History Channel or even Comedy Central haven't picked this up. There are more than enough individual shows to fill more than a year's programming (at one per week).

I didn't think it possible-- a history program which sticks to the relative truth and fact of the matter while simultaneously keeping those with short attention spans interested.

Featuring hundreds of laughs an episode, and offering the kind of satirical wit that seems so very common in Canadian humor (Air Farce, 22 Minutes, and etcetera, anybody?), History Bites seems to hold its own as one of the more tasteful programs on television.

It certainly beats ninety percent of the programs appearing on the Comedy Network in terms of humor and taste.

10/10.

This is a brilliant combination of comedy and interesting history. Try to imagine the result of the SCTV cast (John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, etc.) taking on the teaching of history, and you have a good picture of the result.

The premise is "what if TV had been around for the last 5000 years?" and depicts modern shows (eg. Seinfeld, etc.) as if they had been done in those periods. The witty parody of these shows is reason enough to tune in. This is fine comedy.

Some of the topics are pretty specialized (Math Cults, for example), but the learning is painless, and will frequently have you laughing out loud.

As far as I can tell, this is only available on the Canadian History Television network, though you might want to check with the US History Television channel and your favorite PBS affiliate.

"Only in Canada, you say? Pity."

Pretty good way to trick people into learning- by entertaining them. Much more entertaining than educational, but they do their research well, though some of their joke are off the bat. They're not history teachers.

I was so bad at history, but putting it in a comedic context always helps it to seem interesting. You have to hand it to Rick Green for creating so many really clever projects.

This show is now running on two networks in Canada, the History Channel and the Comedy network. The episodes running on the History Channel are the original episodes from 1998, although later episodes may crop up later.

A few pieces of interesting trivia for fans of the show. It was created by Rick Green, who co-created [ and guest-stars in ] The Red Green show. Steve Smith's [ Red Green ] company produced the show.

One episode I was watching earlier today seemed to feature an appearance by Jessica Holmes, before she starred in her own series and in Air Farce. Has anyone else seen this episode to confirm it?