Warning: this article contains spoilers for Industry season four, episode six.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re up to date with Industry (if you\u2019re not, proceed with caution) then you\u2019ll know that Kit Harington\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
How do we know he\u2019s fully going off the rails? That\u2019s 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\u2019t been the only one lately. In The Night Manager,<\/a> Hugh Laurie burst into a rousing verse of the song. You probably don\u2019t need reminding that his character Richard Roper is, to put it mildly, a bit of a bad egg.<\/p>\n Perhaps this is to be expected. Although the works of Gilbert and Sullivan<\/a> 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\u2019s birth. \u201cFor he might have been a Roosian, a French, or Turk or Proosian,\u201d it goes, \u201cBut in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations, he remains an Englishman.\u201d<\/p>\n No wonder the song has become the rallying cry of the rich and horrible. Both Muck and Roper\u2019s sense of superiority by birthright drips out of them. There aren\u2019t many songs that can nail this precise feeling with the sheer accuracy of For He is an Englishman.<\/p>\n What\u2019s interesting, though, is how its use has evolved over time. Prior to this year\u2019s sudden burst, the song has been used here and there on television, and not always to denote villainy. Perhaps the best-known example is the episode of The West Wing<\/a> that paraphrases the song in its title, season two\u2019s And It\u2019s Surely to their Credit. Here, a couple of characters bicker about the song, unable to decide whether it is from HMS Pinafore or The Pirates of Penzance, before the episode concludes with most of the main cast singing it together<\/p>\n In all honesty it\u2019s a little empty. The song is performed without any real thematic cohesion; it is simply a reference that allows some vaguely insufferable people to show everyone how well versed in musicals they are.<\/p>\n Sideshow Bob\u2019s rendition to Bart Simpson is the gold standard performance of the tune. Photograph: 20 Century Fox\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n Another show to feature the song without much meaning is House; in the opening episode of season six Dr House sings the song to mask the noise of him faking a urine sample. The wink here, of course, is that the actor who played House was actually an Englishman, Hugh Laurie, who clearly likes this song more than anything else on Earth. In fact, it is highly possible that Laurie is now the only actor to have performed this song twice on two different shows. He is almost certainly the only actor who has performed it in two different accents; in his native English in The Night Manager<\/a>, and in the chewy, geographically nonspecific American accent he had to adopt for House.<\/p>\n However, despite this rush of new renditions, the gold standard for televisual For He is an Englishman usage remains The Simpsons\u2019s Cape Feare, arguably the best episode of the best series ever made. After the rake joke, and the tattoo joke, and the \u201cBart, you want some brownie?\u201d joke comes the moment where Bart Simpson stalls for time by flattering Sideshow Bob\u2019s ego, asking him to perform HMS Pinafore in its entirety. He obliges, and his performance ends with a rousing blast of For He is an Englishman, concluding with a round of applause and a drop-down union jack.<\/p>\n