Corrected entry: Crowley's car has a CD player: a Pioneer DEH-X1790UB, even in the 1991 sequence. It has front USB and the manual is dated 2014 - not fitting the time period.
Corrected entry: Crowley boasts to the other demons about having disrupted the mobile telephone network (causing millions of people irritation and so serving the cause of hell). But in 1991, very few people would have been affected - only very few people had mobile phones for work. (In The Book he caused a traffic jam).
Correction: The series isn't set in 1991 - it's kept deliberately vague as to exactly when the setting is, but clearly modern enough for the mobile phone network to be an annoyance if disrupted.
Doesn't it say 1991 in the captions then, or anywhere else? But Bush senior is president when the ambassador's wife is giving birth. Briefly mentioned and shown during the video conference (which is another weird mistake).
The scene in which Crowley claims to have taken down the entire London-area mobile phone network is set 11 years before the events of the modern day sections of the show. The actor playing the president is simply credited as "George Bush" but does not specify which. It is more likely he is portraying George W Bush based on his appearance and the apparent time frame of the show (2008-2019).
Also, the voice is supposed to be George W's. His father had a very distinct and very different way of speaking.
11 years before 2002, which I think is given at some point in the first episode. So... 1991. Of course, this all doesn't fit very well; that's why it's a mistake.
I'm watching it now and it doesn't give a year at any point - just "eleven years ago" and then "the present day." The president is George W Bush given the distinct voice, plus the portable screen the Ambassador is using definitely isn't 1991 technology.
But Bush is in some places castlisted as GHW Bush, though. He's voiced by a GW Bush impersonator which perhaps throws people off the scent. (That last bit about the "1991 facetime" would have been yet another mistake - or rather, I'd suspect the mistake would be the contested caption containing a date).
The credits simply say "George Bush" - any other cast lists are third-party and can't be taken as accurate. So either the mistakes are the video call, and the wrong president, and the phone network, OR none of those are mistakes because there's no date given, and all of them line up perfectly with being set in 2008.
Actually a date can be inferred from episode 2, based on the burning of the witch + "350-odd"/about 360 years (difference on account of the flashback). So okay, it's the last days of Dubya then... Funny how many landlines they are still using then, though.
I don't think it's a mistake. While never explicitly stated, it is continuously implied that the series doesn't take place in the 1990s like the books, but in our present day England. As others pointed it out, if we subtract 11 years from 2019 to get Adam's birth year, that's 2008, when George W. Bush was still in office, videoconferencing was already a thing and Crowley could have taken the phone lines down.
Correction: As noted on another entry, no part of this episode takes place in 1991. Adam was born around 2008 and most of the series takes place in the modern day. If the USB port and manual are visible in any of the flashbacks, please specify where.
It's there too in the flashbacks, sometimes more, sometimes less visible; but if the story were not dated, as some claim, then no, in that case it wouldn't be a mistake. (I specifically recall a caption with a date in line with the original story, by the way..).
Spiny Norman
If you can provide the time/scene when that caption is displayed, please do.
Jon Sandys ★