From The West Wing to The Simpsons, House and now Industry, TV baddies have made a tongue-in-cheek Gilbert and Sullivan show tune their own
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Industry season four, episode six.
If you’re up to date with Industry (if you’re not, proceed with caution) then you’ll know that Kit Harington’s character Henry Muck has spent season four being even more of a nightmare than usual. He has been depressed, intoxicated, suicidal and horny in equal measure, all of which was topped off in the most recent episode with a sweaty bunk-up with a guy in a club.
How do we know he’s fully going off the rails? That’s easy: the club scene was directly preceded by a shot of Muck in the shower, singing For He is an Englishman from HMS Pinafore. And he hasn’t been the only one lately. In The Night Manager, Hugh Laurie burst into a rousing verse of the song. You probably don’t need reminding that his character Richard Roper is, to put it mildly, a bit of a bad egg.
Perhaps this is to be expected. Although the works of Gilbert and Sullivan have gained a reputation for being chummy, collegiate and a little pompous, For He is an Englishman is in fact a bitingly satirical piece of faux-patriotism. Although it sounds like something to be bellowed by tipsy Last Night of the Proms poshos, the song speaks to the kind of blind nationalism that bases exceptionalism purely on the location of one’s birth. “For he might have been a Roosian, a French, or Turk or Proosian,” it goes, “But in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations, he remains an Englishman.”
