Look and Read is a long-running Edutainment Show on The BBC for primary schools, first broadcast in 1967. It consists of a series of unrelated stories spread over several episodes each, with numerous musical interludes intended to teach children about subjects such as spelling and vocabulary.
Look and Read serials with their own trope pages include:
Look and Read provides examples of:
- Amusing Alien: Ollie from Earthwarp, for the most part is a comedic character. He pretty much has the mind of a child, is constantly hungry and struggles to hide himself from the hotel guests and staff.
- Blitz Evacuees: Norman, Dennis and Mary in Spywatch.
- Cephalothorax: Wordy is basically a hovering sphere covered in letters, with arms and a face.
- Doctor Whomage: In Sky Hunter, Geoffrey Bayldon seems to be doing a William Hartnell impression, combined with Jon Pertwee's dress sense, as antiques expert Mr. Trimm. Funnily enough, he was one of the original candidates to play the Doctor.
- Framing Story: Many of the storylines had a framing story with the educational bits, often featuring Wordy and a human assistant in a thematically appropriate location.
- Friendly Ghost: Lord Dark's ancestor in Dark Towers accurately describes himself as one.
- Green Aesop: Earthwarp is about the dangers of pollution (although it's a bit Space Whale Aesop about it). Sky Hunter is a more down-to-earth story about how egg-collecting threatens endangered birds.
- Mentor Mascot: Wordy, from 1974 to 1992.
- Zot in Earthwarp.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Through the Dragon's Eye went over-budget, forcing the producers to remount Sky Hunter as Sky Hunter II.
- Sequel Episode: Sky Hunter II adds some new segments with the now-grown up characters working for the RSPB, played by the original actors. We also find out that two of the characters got married and have a baby.
- Those Two Guys: Mrs Grant and Mrs Ramsden from Earthwarp are two elderly guests at the Rowlands' hotel. Their main purpose is to react to the strange goings on around them and the bizarre behavior of the other characters. This comes to an end at roughly the halfway point when Mrs Grant, after being terrified by a sleepwalking Ollie, decides she's had enough and cuts her holiday short.
