Factual error: When the captain sleeps in Darwin's house, first half 19th century, the bedroom appears to have electric light that uses a modern light switch. It's somewhat unlikely that this would be completely accidental, but since it serves no evident purpose for the story: mistake.
Spiny Norman
29th Sep 2025
The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012)
28th Jan 2025
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1986)
Factual error: When Holmes is on the mantelpiece to examine the cut bell rope, you can see a telephone line against the wall; it has been nailed to the top of the wainscoting with two standard white cable clips.
26th Feb 2023
Plebs (2013)
The Banquet - S5-E3
Factual error: The library contains books as we know them, with a spine. But Roman libraries had scrolls.
17th Feb 2023
Plebs (2013)
The Banquet - S5-E3
Factual error: During The Banquet, everyone is seated at the dinner table. But Romans famously ate reclining. They should have lain down to eat.
28th Jul 2022
Persuasion (2022)
Factual error: Twice during the movie, streetlights are visible: once when lady Russell informs Anne of Wentworth's engagements, and once while Anne is running after Wentworth. (Streetlights, lit by gas, were indeed conceived during the regency period - but they were experimental curiosities, and certainly not yet installed nationwide).
3rd Feb 2022
You Rang, M'Lord? (1988)
Factual error: Teddy says that he hates the stories by Wodehouse about the stuttering Bertie Wooster. However, Wooster only had a stutter in the 1965 TV series "World of Wooster", not in the original stories or in any other adaptations such as "Jeeves and Wooster." "You Rang" is set in the 1920s, and thus 40 years too early to have seen that program on television.
28th Sep 2019
Goodbye Again (1968)
Episode #1.3 - S1-E3
Factual error: In the Scarlet Pimpernel sketch, the opening caption reads "France, 1778." This is the Scarlet Pimpernel who rescues people during the "Reign of Terror", as is confirmed several times during the sketch. But the French Revolution was still eleven years away and its Reign of Terror wouldn't start until 1793.
4th Oct 2018
Once Upon a Time... Space (1982)
Factual error: The forces of Cassiopeia all sport the crown-like "W" sign which is the shape of that constellation... but only as seen from earth! These five points in three-dimensional space (like all star signs named after anything) look like that when viewed from our own planet; but from anywhere else, they aren't shaped like that at all. Why would they chose to see themselves through a very specific angle of view from some other distant planet (earth)?
29th Oct 2017
Love Actually (2003)
Factual error: The place where Jamie is writing his novel is revealed to be Marseilles, France, when he flies back to propose. In the first part of their story, it might have been Portugal; his housekeeper spoke French, which is a common second language in that country; and Aurelia only spoke Portuguese. Yet in the entire second part, no-one speaks any French at all; only Portuguese and a few words of English. Sure enough there are many Portuguese families living in France; but they do not have their own linguistic enclave in Marseilles, and any generation growing up there would have learnt French as well. Either the language or the airport name are wrong.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: In the second part, only a few people are heard speaking Portuguese. They are mostly Aurelia's family or friends of the family. It's reasonable to assume that these few people spoke Portuguese.
But they would not speak only Portuguese and live there with a business and everything (even supposing that Aurelia had only joined them recently). And aren't there various neighbours, bystanders, and restaurant guests too? (Hence the closing remark in the original mistake entry about there not being an enclave there.) It still looks to me like the movie doesn't quite know whether they're in the South of France or in Portugal.
22nd Oct 2017
Atlantis (2013)
Factual error: In the last minutes, the show looks forward to future challenges, in effect a preview of the never-made 3rd series. The oracle says they must find "the golden fleece, woven long ago by the Stygian witches." But the golden fleece, or indeed any fleece, is not a woven fabric. (Today's fleece is a modern invention).
9th Oct 2017
Out of the Unknown (1965)
Sucker Bait - S1-E7
Factual error: It is quite true that atoms that do not occur naturally are bad for humans. However, in a space age as this story's, that would apply to most or even all planets. It would be a well known risk that didn't require an abnormal specialist to diagnose. (This fact rarely figures in other SF, because it would severely limit most stories).