Spawning Satan

Andy Hamilton, one of the geniuses behind the brilliant BBC sitcom Outnumbered, has a new documentary out about the Devil himself, called Andy Hamilton’s Search for Satan. Those of you who live in the UK (or, ahem, if you have access to a UK proxy server) will be able to watch it on iPlayer for the rest of the week, but someone has conveniently (and rather naughtily) posted the entire thing on YouTube for your viewing pleasure:

[Update: not surprisingly, the video was removed from YouTube. It's not that difficult to find, though, if you really want to see it.]

It’s a very entertaining hour, chronicling the evolution of Satan over the centuries from his mythological beginnings in pre-Christian religions to how he is depicted in the popular culture of today. Especially funny are the clips of three medieval monks discussing how best to cobble together all the little bits of Biblical and extra-Biblical Satanic lore into a cohesive and passably convincing whole. Not surprisingly, that is not an easy undertaking.