The new Spitting Image? Maybe not, but Newzoids could be the political comedy we’ve been crying out for
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Version 0 of 1. A show being plugged as “the new Spitting Image” has just been announced for ITV. Twenty years after the show finished its Sunday night broadcasts, Newzoids promises a “biting look at the world of politics and celebrity”. It will feature latex puppet versions of David Cameron, Russell Brand and Jeremy Kyle where the original had Margaret Thatcher, Arthur Scargill and Pope John Paul II. Can I be the first to say that Newzoids is not as funny as it used to be? During the many years that I spent writing for Spitting Image, pompous critics would regularly bemoan the decline in TV satire and declare: “They should bring back That Was the Week That Was; now that really was hard-hitting!” Anyone with a comic bone in their body knew that the idea of resuscitating a 1963 revue show in the middle of the angry 1980s would have been a terrible idea, just as a revived Spitting Image today would inevitably be a big disappointment. However, it seems to me that British television is currently crying out for a new comedy show that engages audiences with the important business of politics and power. (Setting out with the declared intention of doing “satire” always makes me think of those jokes where the audience clap rather than actually laugh.) So I welcome Newzoids and have enormous respect for the people putting it together, but I’m guessing they won’t be thanking the publicity people for the obvious comparison. The sheer scale of Spitting Image would make it impossible today in the era of low-budget, multichannel television. It demanded what I can only describe as a huge satire factory in a converted warehouse in east London. The sheer scale of Spitting Image would make it impossible today in the era of low-budget, multi-channel TV In the room next to where we were writing, life-size clay heads were being created of new celebrities; there were modellers, foam casters, painters; you could just wander in to where they were adding the last few freckles to the Sarah Ferguson puppet or doing the initial drawings for Edwina Currie (though she was so desperate to feature in the show that we left her out for several series). Add to that the puppeteers and brilliant voice artists like Harry Enfield, Kate Robbins and Steve Coogan – you had an insanely complex and expensive operation that could only be justified because it was regularly watched by more than 10 million people. Of course, sometimes we had to make do. I remember co-writing a sketch featuring Yasser Arafat, but it turned out there was no such puppet. “Let me see what I can do,” said the puppet wrangler. Ten minutes later, he came back with Ringo Starr wearing sunglasses and a tea-towel wrapped around his head. “Yup, works for me.” For one football sketch, we were short of England players, so we just put a donkey in the appropriate football shirt. Tony Adams was greeted with a chorus of braying from all the away fans the following Saturday. Spitting Image was a shared national experience in a way that almost no TV show can be today. But all the critics who will predictably declare that Newzoids is not as funny as Spitting Image will have erased from their memory just how unfunny our latex lampoonery could often be. Sometimes we reached great heights, other times we completely missed the target. But what the show did have was impact, the shock of the new. To actually see grotesque 3D caricatures of politicians, to hear them say what we thought they were really thinking, felt pretty revolutionary three decades ago. There was still a lingering sense of deference and respect towards those we elected to high office. No show today could really expect to shock the British public by suggesting that politicians might be venal or petty or dishonest. Related: Spitting Image exhibition allows Margaret Thatcher centre stage – again What might actually outrage millions of viewers in 2015 is something a little closer to the truth. Imagine a show that dared to challenge the lazy prejudices of its own viewers; that portrayed most politicians as honest, hard-working people who give up their evenings and weekends to help ordinary constituents with a myriad of social problems. There would be an outrage! “Dear BBC, I wish to complain in the strongest possible terms about this evening’s so-called entertainment! My family and I were deeply offended to see a programme in which a politician was portrayed not lining his own pockets or skiving off in the House of Commons bar. Do we really pay our licence fee to have these appalling lies pumped into our living rooms? Impressionable children might have been watching!” If Newzoids can help make a few alienated voters re-engage with politics in election year, it will be a welcome addition to a pretty depressing level of debate. But if it opts for the lazy, “they’re all as bad as each other” level of faux-satire, it will only add to the disengagement that helps keep the powerful so safe and secure. Cynical, kneejerk put-downs aside, we need more political jokes. And I don’t mean the sort that keep getting elected. Damn, I just did it as well. It’s just too easy. |