Historical Consultant

A banner image showing the original cast of Horrible Histories in various historical costumes: Tudor, Roman, Georgian, Victorian, Arctic explorer, Egyptian

HORRIBLE HISTORIES

Greg Jenner was the Historical Consultant to BBC’s multi-award winning Horrible Histories  comedy TV series. Between 2008-2019, he was responsible for the factual accuracy of more than 2,000 sketches and 140+ songs, with subject matter spanning the entirety of human history. As a writer, he also contributed lots of sketches wrote the lyrics to three songs. He also worked on Horrible Histories With Stephen Fry, five series of HH: Gory Games, and the accompanying CBBC online videogames.

A photo of Greg in a suit, posing with a gold BAFTA awardIn 2014 Horrible Histories was named the ‘Best Non-Fiction Children’s Programme of the Past 50 Years’ by the International Prix Jeunesse (which was nice!) and it twice won ‘Best Sketch Show’ at the British Comedy Awards — being the first ever children’s programme to have received this accolade. Greg was also a named recipient of a Children’s BAFTA award in 2011, and the series then broke records by winning four Children’s BAFTAs in a row over 4 years. 

Since 2009, Horrible Histories has picked up 30 BAFTA nominations and 9 wins. In 2017, the Magna Carta anniversary special won an International Emmy award 

The Horrible Histories Movie poster, showing big yellow writing on a red background, and the various characters from the film surrounding it

Greg was also the lead historical adviser on the spin-off film, Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans (2019) which was nominated for three Children’s BAFTAs. It focused on an unlikely friendship between a Roman teenage boy and a teenage Celt girl during the Boudican rebellion of 60-61 CE in Britain. The film starred Emilia Jones, Sebastian Croft, Nick Frost, Kate Nash, Craig Roberts, Kim Catrall, and many other talents of British comedy.

CORPSE TALK

Corpse Talk banner showing animated host Adam surrounded by famous dead people from historyGreg is the historical adviser to Corpse Talk (2022), the YouTube Kids animated adaptation of Adam and Lisa Murphy’s successful comic book series, in which Adam interviews History’s most famous people from beyond (and in!) the grave, using flashbacks and imaginary scenarios to explore what they got up to in their dramatic lifetimes. Episodes include Mozart, Cleopatra, Josephine Baker.

Corpse Talk launched to instant success of YouTube and several of the episodes received 1 million views within a week of launch. In March 2023 it was nominated for Best Children’s Show at the Royal Television Society awards.