Premise
The series is created, written, and presented by Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones. [2] [3] [4] Mark Cooper-Jones is a former geography teacher, [3] [4] and the pair met at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where both were performing in 2009 or 2010. [4] [5] The series started in 2016, [4] and has aired for four complete series, with a fifth one currently airing. The episodes are a mix of comedy and geography, [4] with each episode answering a short geographical question, often involving maps. [4] The style has been compared to Horrible Histories [2] [3] and the pair cite their inspiration as Monty Python. [4] The videos feature deadpan, split-second visual gags, and comic sketches. [3] [6]
The pair have claimed the show's success to be due to the growing redundancy of maps as an everyday item, leaving them to be "geeky". [4] They also cite the mix of comedy and geography as the unique element behind the series, leading to its success compared to other more education-based alternatives. [6] In 2021, the series was nominated under the "learning and education" category for the 11th Streamy Awards, losing to Veritasium. [7] In 2024, an edited version of the video about why some British place-names are hard to pronounce won 'Video of the Year' in the inaugural UK and Ireland TikTok Awards. [8] In October 2025, the duo released the book This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters) ( ISBN 978-0-3697-7503-0).
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
