British TV show visits all Birminghams in the U.S., Burlington and Chester Counties included

In the new British comic-documentary United States of Birmingham, British celebrity Joe Lycett visits all 17 municipalities named Birmingham in America (and one in Canada) — including burgs in Burlington and Chester Counties.

The comedian, not a household name here but a big deal in the United Kingdom, loves his Birmingham, England, roots, and sets out to unite his hometown with all other Birminghams to formulate ties, sign “treaties,” and, in his cheeky parlance, “to provide an alternative to NATO … which has fallen.”

At turns affectionate, silly, and sassy, the first hour of the four-hour program about “Brummies” (which is what Birmingham people call themselves) was shown Tuesday in the United Kingdom on Sky TV. It is currently unavailable here, but Sky TV permitted a screening in Burlington County.

Curious in his anthropological mission, Lycett seems determined to understand the Philadelphia region’s Birminghams, which many folks around here may not know all that much about themselves.

It’s a good bet that few people could find the tiny Jersey Birmingham, located in the Pine Barrens, on a map. And in 2006, Philadelphia Magazine referenced the Chester County municipality by asking: “Who here has ever heard of Birmingham Township?” (There’s actually another Birmingham, Pa., in Huntingdon County, but that doesn’t appear to be part of the show.)

In the show, Lycett presents tales of the Jersey Devil; horrifying stories of proposed sterilization of Garden Staters; Pennsylvania ghosts who starred on the Syfy Channel (then called SciFi); and a now-pastoral killing field on which a charismatic farmer organizes reenactments of America’s first bloody 9/11 — this one in 1777 — when the Marquis de Lafayette was wounded, George Washington was nearly taken prisoner, and as many as 2,000 soldiers died, all about four miles from where a Whole Foods now stands.

“You can’t call Birmingham in Burlington County a town,” Paulie Wenger, 26, a Ph.D. history student from the University of Delaware and a Birmingham native, said in an interview. “It’s a super-small, unincorporated area that’s almost a place.”

There’s basically a post office and a chemical company in what would charitably be called Birmingham’s downtown. The population, Wenger pointed out, is currently 32.

Wenger helped Lycett and his crew understand his Birmingham when they showed up in June 2024.

The hamlet is home to “the most industrious, smart, and self-motivated people in the entire world,” Wenger said. Birmingham’s most famous resident was Murrell Dobbins, who built numerous Philadelphia buildings and became city treasurer. His name lives on, affixed to the Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School in North Philadelphia.

But not everyone has recognized the gifts that Pineys possess, Wenger said.

In the early 20th century, eugenics studies denigrated the isolated group as “congenital idiots and criminals.” When he was running for New Jersey governor in 1913, James Fielder suggested Pineys be sterilized, because they were seen as inbred criminals, Wenger said. Fielder won office but didn’t go through with the idea.

Wenger shared this with Lycett, who seems joyful that the threatened 20th-century Birmingham Pineys were allowed to make 21st-century ones.

“Maybe there’s some sort of Birmingham spirit that joins us all,” he says in the show. “I’d like to find out what that is.”

After hearing about the Jersey Devil, the mythical Piney creature with wings and a dragon’s head, Lycett looks up from his burger at the White Dotte Dairy Bar & Grill in nearby Southampton Township and ad-libs, “Oh, just like Simon Cowell.”

To get in better touch with American culture, Lycett visits Big Igloo Armory to peruse guns in Pemberton, the township in which Birmingham sits.

“I’ve never been in a gun shop before,” Lycett tells an employee.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the employee says.

After choosing an “entry-level handgun with colors” (blue and white), Lycett accompanies the gun guys to a shooting range.

“Do I look like James Bond?” he asks. Firing the weapon and, surprisingly, hitting a target with consistency, Lycett says: “I’m a cold-blooded killer. It worries me how much I loved it.”

Later in the show, Lycett rides through the hills of Birmingham, Chester County, in awe.

“Oh, nice houses,” he says, surveying the affluent 4,000-person enclave. The township has been “very popular as a home for DuPont executives and people working in finance through the years,” said Dan Hill, a township supervisor, in an interview.

Lycett meets RandellSpackman, 52, owner of Thornbury Farm. He’s a kind of country squire who is president of the nearby Chadds Ford Historical Society and a Revolutionary War reenactor.

“I’m such a unique individual,” he joked in an interview earlier this week. “I’m attention-seeking in my way.”

Spackman, who lives on the 180-acre property in a house built in 1812, said that 30,000 soldiers clashed in his fields and others nearby during the Battle of Brandywine.

Every five years he hosts a reenactment that attracts as many as 20,000 participants and visitors from around 40 states. A Ken Burns documentary about the Revolutionary War, due to air in November, will include discussion of the battle, Spackman said.

As he demonstrates in Lycett’s show, Spackman wears a British uniform during these events, and he wields a Brown Bess musket.

“The reason I choose the British side is because history is always told by winners,” Spackman said. “But by assuming a British identity as a member of the 43rd Regiment of Foot in the King’s Army, it’s more complicated and involved for me, and I get to learn history from another perspective.”

In the show, Lycett quickly dons British red, and joins Spackman on the field of battle.

“War has been declared just for me,” he says. “If I’d been around in those days, America would still be under Britain.

“Let’s shoot Americans!”

The ersatz colonial and British forces stand in the open field, taking turns “firing” at one another.

“It was all a very polite war,” Lycett quips.

And a costly one, Spackman later said, reflecting on the real event: “It was a big loss of life that makes us aware of our freedom.”

The ghosts of soldiers and others continue to haunt the area, he said. The farm was profiled in the TV show Ghost Hunters in 2009, and was the subject of a Duke University study of the paranormal in the 1980s.

Spackman said there has been talk of a laughing “prankster ghost” that turns flashlights on, among other spirits.

Ultimately, Lycett’s first hour of United States of Birmingham was a hit, at least among Pineys and their friends who gathered to screen the program in a Browns Mills, Burlington County, community center.

“The show helps people know the beauty of our village,” said Birmingham antiques dealer Mary Grove, 61. “I really liked it.”

It’s not yet clear whether Brits felt the same way.

But at least “no Brummies were harmed in the making of this programme and some may even have enjoyed themselves,” according to a review in England’s Guardian newspaper.

As for Lycett himself, the project accomplished its goal: “I’m giddy,” he says in the show.

“We’re now officially friends with other Birminghams,” as well as people who all share “Brummie DNA.”