So Wednesday's XKCD led, of course, to the question, "What the bleeding *heck* is Helvetica Syndrome?" A little quick research led me to this YouTube segment, which is from the first episode of Look Around You.
Uh-oh.
Summary: Look Around You is a 2005 TV series that ran on the BBC for two seasons. It is a *remarkably* deadpan parody of 1980's science-education television. Quite funny, and remarkably strange in that way that only the Beeb can manage.
Fortunately, the series is short -- a modest number of episodes, all of them pretty brief. But I wasn't exactly in need of more things to watch...