Proper Gander: Rubber Reboot (2020)

The Proper Gander column from the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Longstanding rivals ITV and the BBC have realised they share a common enemy in the online video channels and streaming services poaching their viewers. So they’ve uncharacteristically teamed up to try and compete against young upstarts like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Their ‘joint vision’ (as they put it) is Britbox, a video on demand channel launched in November 2019 in the UK, having previously been available in North America. Take out a subscription and you’ll have access to TV series from the archives which you’d have hoped would otherwise be on the BBC iPlayer or ITV Hub for free. Many of the two channels’ well-known dramas, sitcoms and documentaries are on Britbox (along with a little content from Channels 4 and 5), but there’s nothing too obscure, unfortunately. The range would be improved if they dug out some Play For Todays and World In Actions.

Britbox is aimed at fans of familiar old telly, but has recently branched out into premiering its own new material. So it’s pitching to its target audience by starting with something nostalgic, a revival of puppet-based satirical sketch show Spitting Image. Last seen on ITV in 1996, the series is best remembered for its 1980s heyday, with its increasingly-insane Margaret Thatcher, its tipsy Queen Mother and even chart-topping The Chicken Song. It probably got more people interested in current affairs and party politics than more serious-minded fare did, being one of those programmes regularly talked about in offices and playgrounds the morning after each episode.

Will Spitting Image’s reboot be as popular? Probably not, as its audience is limited to Britbox subscribers. Its makers are hoping for an international reach, though, and have brought in staff from American TV shows to widen its appeal stateside. As the new series is only a few episodes in, it’s too early for the production team to have hit their stride. To keep the sketches topical, they have to be written, blocked out and performed only a few days before transmission, which must be a challenge even without the impact of the pandemic on the TV industry. A lack of material definitely isn’t an issue, though, with the government’s (inevitable) inability to manage the virus situation, and the US Presidential election being obvious targets, along with celebs like Meghan Markle and ‘the husband formerly known as Prince’ Harry.

Around a hundred puppets have been made for the series, in the same rubbery, irreverent style as before. To work, the caricatures need to be exaggerated, while still being close enough to how their real counterparts would talk and act. Memorable grotesques include smug Home Secretary Priti Patel as a dominatrix and later as a vampire (not far off from how ex-Tory MP Edwina Currie had been portrayed), and chief adviser Dominic Cummings as a creepy, googly-eyed alien who eats babies.

 Just as important as the puppets are the scripts, which need to raise both a chuckle and a serious point. The sixteen writers working on the show haven’t yet been able to come up with much that shines, though. One of the better running gags has Donald Trump trying to make a deal with the Coronavirus, or ‘Corony’, as he calls the floating spiked blob which talks with him. ‘You’re everything I like. You’re tough, you’re sneaky, you’re an affront to humanity. I want you in my organisation’, coos Trump. In another skit, Boris Johnson wants to buy off the virus by getting it a seat in the House of Lords and then ends up having a fling with it. Other sketches fall flat: recently re-elected NewZealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is presented as Mary Poppins running the perfect country, but where’s the satire in that? Boris Johnson is depicted as an oblivious mop-topped buffoon, so it’s hardly a caricature at all. And the slanging match between puppets of Donald Trump and Joe Biden wasn’t much different to their real televised ‘debate’. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether the show isn’t being imaginative enough or if our rulers are too far removed from the rest of us to need satirising.

As its focus is on the puppets, Spitting Image ridicules society’s figureheads rather than criticises the system itself. And many of the lampooned luminaries haven’t minded this, and probably like the publicity. Old episodes uploaded to Britbox are introduced by some of the politicians immortalised in latex, including Neil Kinnock on the one hand and Ken Livingstone on the other. They reminisce about enjoying the show at the time, and add that having a puppet made of you was seen as a badge of honour. So, ‘80s Spitting Image wasn’t as anti-establishment as it might appear, and the new series doesn’t even push the boundaries as much as its predecessor. The puppets haven’t got out of hand. So far, the revival has only attracted any controversy with its mean-spirited caricature of environmental activist Greta Thunberg, rather than by saying anything which challenges the status quo. Satire risks just being a safety valve, where our frustrations about the system can be voiced in a contained, witty way. At its best, and Spitting Image sadly seldom gets there, satire highlights the absurdities of capitalist society, and thereby helps undermine it.

Mike Foster

Proper Gander: Puppets and Politics (2015)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The run-up to a general election is as good a time as any to launch a puppet-based satirical sketch show. Featuring caricatures of  politicians, royalty and celebs, Newzoids (ITV) inevitably draws comparisons with Spitting Image, which set the template back in the ’80s. Some sketches are made only a day or so before broadcast, so the show reflects what’s in the news, hence its title.

Newzoids has inherited its predecessor’s puerile tastelessness, but sadly the puppets are less detailed and expressive, even with the addition of CGI mouths. Technology has moved on since Spitting Image’s day, so these puppets have been computer-designed and 3D-printed. Caricatures are more effective – and funnier – the more exaggerated they are, and Newzoids’ puppets don’t quite go far enough.

The same can be said for the programme’s sketches, which don’t always make the most of their set-ups. So, Newzoids might take a while to find its own voice and style; it took Spitting Image a few years to establish itself as one of those programmes which gets talked about the following morning. Memorable skits from the first episode include David Cameron being carried in a sedan chair to a drive-thru burger bar, and Ed Miliband as a dim-witted and goofy contestant on ‘I’m A Catastrophe, Get Me Out Of Here’. Nigel Farage is turned into a downmarket stand-up comic with a routine of ‘plain old patriotic foreigner-bashing’, while Clegg and Cameron become a dysfunctional couple picked apart by Jeremy Kyle. Lampooning our leaders – and wannabe leaders – should make us question why we expect them to represent us or have our best interests at heart. Sending something up is supposed to undermine confidence in it, so satire has a useful role in highlighting society’s shaky beliefs, such as faith in leaders.

Mike Foster

Between the Lines: "Life under capitalism is a serious business . . ." (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life under capitalism is a serious business, but there are some laughs along the way, often at the expense of the rulers rather than the ruled. Modern political humour comes in a variety of forms, several of which have received a TV airing in recent weeks. Most aim their fire at the easiest targets of them all politicians — and with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Spitting Image (ITV, Sundays, 10pm). the long-running puppet show, attempts political comedy via the art of caricature and lampoonery. and not really as successfully as when it began in Thatcher's heyday. Its 1987 General Election special with Thatcher's cabinet rigged out in lederhosen singing "Tomorrow belongs to me" was a masterly piece of political lampoonery at a time when tomorrow really did seem to belong to them, with their market lunacies and anti-trade unionism all fuelled by the prejudices of the wide-boys in the City

Since then things have turned sour for the economy and the Conservatives alike, and Spitting Image has been struggling hard to keep up with the trend. When "personalities" abound in the realm of capitalist politics caricature is in vogue, but when confronted with the present political vacuum, it loses its bite and has to look elsewhere for entertainment.

A popular offshoot of caricature has been the art of mimickry and impression. Mike Yarwood made this popular in the 1970s with his homely impersonations of Wilson and Callaghan, but just like them, what he said was always secondary to the way he said it. Yarwood eventually took to the bottle when his principal targets left the political scene, leaving him devoid of replacements. His line in political impressionism was eventually taken up by Rory Bremner (C4. Saturdays. 10.05pm and Wednesdays. 11.05pm). Bremner. who is possibly no more talented a mimic than Yarwood. succeeds where Yarwood failed through greater flexibility and better scripts. Bremner aims at much more than simply poking fun from the sidelines and consequently his show is often one of the most overtly political on television. Its mimickry is frequently blended with satire to highlight the cant and hypocrisy of the ruling elite in society. The politician/interviewer sketches involving John Bird have been particularly effective and haven’t shirked from showing up not just the insanities of the political process itself but the market system which dictates the parameters within which politicians are bound. Bremner and his supporting cast appear to have a deep antipathy towards the market economy which can only be applauded by socialists, though unsurprisingly it has already provoked the wrath of Tory politicians and sections of the tabloid press.

A more subtle approach to political comment has recently been provided by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick's new black comedy If You See God, Tell Him (BBC 1, Thursdays. 9.30pm). In this sitcom the lead character, played by Richard Briers, has suffered a freak accident which has left him with a thirty-second attention span ideal for memorizing TV adverts, but little else. Briers’s character becomes obsessed with TV advertising, organizing his life around what he has been influenced to buy, and spending his “happiest" hours attempting to get his dishes whiter than white with the latest revolutionary brand of washing-up liquid. Needless to say, the compensation money from his accident is spent within a matter of weeks and his life becomes a market-driven living nightmare in every sense.

Just like One Foot In The Grave, which emerged from the same writing stable, If You See God, Tell Him takes the particularly frustrating aspects of capitalist life and magnifies them until they emerge at the level of obsession. The humour has a somewhat sick edge to it in parts, and will not be to everybody's taste, but it sure beats the trash usually served up as an excuse for situation comedy. And it is refreshing to see a sitcom — often the most tame form of comedy — which shows a willingness to illuminate some of the inanities and insanities of the market system.

Dave Perrin