Shambolic comedy is his sword and shield (Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images)
Last Wednesday, as the scandal of Downing Street’s mysterious Christmas party entered its grimly farcical second week, The Thick of It predictably trended on Twitter. Armando Iannucci’s Westminster sitcom, in which politicians and advisers stumble through an endless minefield in a perpetual flop sweat, certainly felt apt. But it’s worth asking why a show that debuted during the dog days of New Labour and bowed out midway through the coalition years remains the default reference point nine years later.
Political satire has been in a confused state these past five years, since Donald Trump short-circuited it so dramatically that it is yet to recover. It became a cliché to say that the things Trump said and did on a daily basis would have had you laughed out of any writers’ room if you’d invented them. How could you parody a man who, vaccinated against embarrassment by his total absence of humour, parodied himself? Boris Johnson is a very different character — a sense of shambolic comedy is his sword and shield — but similarly hard to spoof because he caricatures himself.
After The Thick of It, Iannucci went to the US and launched Veep, bringing a dissonant note of panic and incompetence to a country where fictional presidents are usually very good (Jed Bartlett from The West Wing) or very bad (Frank Underwood from House of Cards), but generally on top of things either way. He left the show after three seasons in 2015 so that he could direct movies, just in time to avoid having to grapple with the conundrum of a president who made Veep’s Selina Meyer look relatively decent and proficient. David Mandel, his replacement as showrunner, didn’t so much solve the problem as ignore it. Veep remained very funny but it lost much of its relevance by unplugging itself from the wild new reality of Washington DC. It ended in 2019, a few months after House of Cards.
Nothing has come along to replace those shows. The old warhorses of satire roll on — Have I Got News for You and the revived Spitting Image in the UK; Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show in the US (a British version of SNL is in the pipeline). But where are the dramas and scripted comedies? Politics is not where the action is.
When I interviewed Iannucci recently, he chose Succession and The White Lotus as the most biting satires around. Both shows coolly dissect the callousness of the very rich, and show the casualties they leave behind. Inevitably, some of that wealth comes from tech. Nicole Mossbacher (Connie Britton) in The White Lotus is the CFO of a popular search engine. In this series of Succession, Waystar-Royco’s old-media empire is seeking a life-saving deal with Lukas Mattson (Alexander Skarsgaard), the bored and ruthless CEO of the streaming company GoJo. The most powerful character in Iannucci’s own Avenue 5, a sci-fi sitcom about a society under pressure, is tech billionaire Herman Judd, played by Josh Gad as a vain man-baby. And it’s telling that Adam McKay, whose 2018 movie Vice was a black comedy about Dick Cheney, is making his next picture about Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal.
There’s a novelty factor here. Next to most politicians, the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are fascinatingly weird characters with literally cosmic ambitions. Mark Zuckerberg, in his public appearances, comes off as less a human being than a beta-version AI — a flesh-and-blood demonstration of the uncanny valley. This is good material. Take Christopher Evan Welch in Silicon Valley, whose character Peter Gregory always looked as if he were on the verge of teleporting back to his home planet, Oscar Isaac’s malfunctioning hipster hermit in Ex Machina, or Nick Offerman’s glumly deranged schlub-genius in Devs. Succession’s Lukas Mattson combines a killer instinct with airport-bookstore self-help mantras and the distinct impression that he could tank GoJo’s share price with a single ill-judged tweet composed while tripping at Burning Man.
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SubscribeI think that one of the reasons why New Labour was so relaxed about inviting satire was that they were busy removing every real lever of power from the democratic sphere and handing it to their unelected mates in the judiciary and the NGO’s. The stupider politicians looked, the easier it was to take power from them and ultimately from the people.
We all sat there laughing but the joke was on us.
French fisherman are again trying to remove power from the democratic sphere at Xmas while we are on that subject.
Surely satire is apparently dead because the satirists and the politicians alike are obliged to spout the same platitudes, strike the same attitudes and conform to modern shibboleths. And where there is socially enforced uniformity there can be no mockery. Back in the day, the pinstriped, bowler hatted establishment was treated as absurd by a sharp suited, swaggering insurgency. Today, by contrast, our new “hip” establishment will not tolerate for one moment the derision of either its personnel or its beliefs. Take “The vicar of Dibley” as an early example. To many, the notion of women priests was ipso facto preposterous, but far from taking its cue from such a notion, the series offered us a saccharine, roseate view of a “warm”, “vibrant”, “feisty” heroine surrounded by rural fools. In short, it was propaganda for “reform”. And it is because the left has no sense of humour, no sense of the absurd – having junked spontaneously accepted convention – no feeling that whatever reforms are enacted, human life will always involve the risible, that it cannot satirise. It can merely express approval or disapproval, esteem or contempt, love or hate.
The reform in the Church of England to allow the ordination of women had already been enacted in 1992, before ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ started broadcasting in 1994. So the accusation of propagandising to achieve a social change can’t be levelled at it, at least in that instance.
Some of us find it somewhat bizarre that so many people get so hot under the collar about this issue. If there is anything like a ‘God’, it certainly would not have a gender. Ok, complacent tradionalists (who would probably be utterly shocked by the antics of any modern day Jesus) don’t like the change. However that particular change seemed to have a great deal of logic behind it; we are actually supposed to be rational creatures even in Christian belief. Irrespective of that, the CoE made its own decision.
The fact that the Christian Church was an overwhelmingly patriarchal organisation for centuries, like all the other, even to a significant extent inheriting an administrative and governing machinery from the Roman Empire, is just one of many of its many oppressive tendencies which detract rather than enhance from any truth claims it may make.
Awaiting for approval again – I think I found the word the machines objected to – falsely, because I was not using it in any offensive sense.
Oh, come off it! Do you really think that “reforms” once enacted by parliament are over? Aren’t we living precisely in an age when the falsity of that view has been comprehensively exposed? In an age when “reform” has taken a cultural turn and doesn’t merely change the law but seeks to change attitudes?
As for your “some of us” point, it is precisely what I’m talking about: “People like us,” goes the smug assurance, don’t see a problem. Quite. But ordinary people – “complacent traditionalists” to use your patronising lingo – do. Indeed, it is precisely that “complacent traditionalism”, properly called spontaneously accepted convention, which supplies the foundation of common sense, good humour and comedy. This is a message you’ll find in Dostoevsky, Edmund Burke and even Dickens – always more conservative in feeling than in conscious thought.
Now for “logic”. From the contemptuous way you deal with church thinking it is clear that you are aware of Christian suspicion of human reason, but you give it two out of ten for trying. What if religion, Christianity included, is founded on something else? What if it is founded on instinct – like so-called “patriarchy” itself? What if God, knowing this – unlike raw radicalism – based his church and its message on this human nature? In which case, it is the reformers, trying desperately to square the circles of reality, who are indeed finally and ultimately ridiculous. It stops being funny, of course, when they start destroying things.
Mr Denis
I responded to Mr F before reading you far more elegant reply
It still is deeply patriarchal!! Having ignored the views of all the Women’s organisations involved in the “debate” around transgenderism and refusing to answer Freedom of Information requests as to which organisations they HAVE consulted to produce the latest Living in Love and Faith resources!!! Stonewall is all over it!!
It has nothing to do with patriarchy whatever that might be. It is simply a natural evolution of of the activism that bought us women vicars. You sowed it you reap it.
What puzzles me about the incursion of women into ‘men only’ spaces is why, if the women want ‘power’, they just don’t found their own women-only organisations. End of problem. After all women are much better off in general than they used to be, apparently.
There may be something in that, Arnold. Women could manage very well without us. There is only one thing men can do that women can’t, – produce sperm. Given a few more years of Genetic science, this minor wrinkle can be overcome.One woman gives a blood sample that is converted to a sperm sample. She can then give this to another woman. Of course the offspring of such a union can only be a girl, but so what? Think about a women-only planet: twice the productive capacirty with less than half the consumption of vital resources. And probably a lot less noisy posturing and violence. Of course, I, like other men, will be redundant, but since my reproductive days are over anyway, I will pop my grubby old clogs happy that I’ve made at least one useful contribution to the survival of humankind; – this post!
Agreed – I really dont get why women want to hang out with grubby, farting blokes anyway…..every sensible person on the planet is a lesbian – me included ( i am bloke who prefers gals).
That was an ill-judge comment virtue signalling comment.
The reformation in the C of E may have taken place in 1992 but there was still considerable resistance to the idea of woman vicars back in 1994.
What better way to stick it to the refuseniks and extinguish the last flickers of resistance than to normalise it by putting it on mainstream television.
So far as truth is concerned, the word of God is the word of God and your subjective truth has nothing to do with it. The one thing the word of God needs to be is consistent and unchanging regardless of ephemeral moralities.
And how is being on-trend working out for the good old C of E, it will soon go the way of the Sir Jimmy Savile fan club. In the meantime, if it manages to resist the advances of progressive reformers the Church of Rom will still be around and patriarchy will make a come back.
Why the down votes ?? Tis rather obvious that genuine spirituality is mostly missing from most Christian organizations today – just as it was in Jesus’ day with Jewish organizations – some Roman philosophies had more genuine spirituality to them. So called ‘inspiration’ has always been in short supply – and often found more outside the ‘church’….obvious surely……
I have tried to watch Amazon Prime and Netflix – they endless try to give me free weeks, sometimes I take them, but I look, and look, and look and it is so terrible I could not imagine getting enjoyment from putting any of that stuff on.
There is some old stuff I have watched before which is Ok, and a couple newer things, but 98% is so dreadful, stupid, and degenerate it would be actually unpleasant to watch.
This article was like reading greek to me – who knows all these names, actors and shows? Could you all fallow the article? Do you know the channels, programs, actors, writers? Because if people know this, then they must feel it worth watching. Have watched modern Series and Movies.
Anyway, is it because I am mid 60’s so time has moved on from my old ways – or is it what I feel – that modern entertainment is not fun, pleasant, enjoyable, or interesting? Does anyone watch network TV anymore? I have not put it on for decades, it is such Trash – In London occasionally I would put BBC on – it was just garbage too – like USA TV.
And if it really is the horrible mess of stupid, degenerate, garbage – why do they not make good stuff?
It is not that they cannot do political satire anymore – it is because they can do Nothing worth watching anymore.
Yes I struggled. I’ve heard of most of the shows mentioned, but haven’t watched any of them. I used to watch mainly the news and sport but now find the one sided vacuity of news journalists too much to bear, so pretty much down to sport. Some wildlife documentaries are good.
I will look up the books discussed.
Spot on. But the rubbish will always be there as it is the main market. Netflix and Amazon need AI to classify their stuff. I’m sick of wading through violence and special effects to find real drama based on dialogue!
Unless you’re allergic to older things, my suggestion is simple but likely to be helpful: confine your search to movies, etc., made before the 80s. ‘Twas Star Wars which augured our descent into cultural dullardliness and dreariness.
I don’t watch them but more tellingly, neither do my kids or any of their friends.
Trump was actually funny, by the way, but the joke was on the media and they hated that.
QED by this article.
It’s a pity you haven’t discovered some of what’s available. ”The thick of it” is worth checking out if only for the toxic Scot Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi). It should be available on DVD. Nowadays we’re almost only streaming drama series since mainstream TV is as you say garbage, and there are a few good ones, eg. Le Bureau, french secret service/intelligence and like Homeland it’s closely alligned to real live politics.
Le Bureau est excellent
No Anglosphere irony or camp. Just excellent content
My kids generation have rediscovered Yes, Minister/PM , the truest political satire ever and still laugh out loud funny. The Thick of It is OK, but not in YM class.
Thanks for saying this. It means I’m not alone!
I find that it is the Aussie movies on netflix that are most i touch with reality.
You’re insane. Trump was hilarious. To say he was without humor is like saying Megan and Harry are the epitome of bravery. Trump didn’t throw politics into turmoil, the political and cultural elites of the United States (and obviously of England as well) reaction to him made everything absolutely insane.
Also, as well as being very funny, his approach to international politics cut a lot more ice than the managerial, predictable & weak Democrat approach, ignored by autocrats the world over.
I completely agree with the thrust of this argument – and I find it terrifying. Our PM earns 150K a year, takes crap everyday from the media and the public, and goes into meetings with anonymous executives (people who have no other master than P+L statements and shareholders) who earn that a week, who are unaccountable to the public and live their lives in luxury we can barely fathom and who don’t account for every penny they spend. Amazon executives get their money from us, the public, just as Boris does. We think Boris is rich and posh but he’s a little leaguer compared to Amazon. You couid argue that we do actually ‘vote’ for Amazon by using their service and that they do a better job of giving the public what they want. But is it me or does the prospect of Amazon becoming its own totalitarian empire, where all competition is eventually swallowed up, disconcerting? And we wonder why politicians are corrupted and do their masters’ bidding?
Well, you could argue that because you’d be right – Amazon is “voted” for every time someone buys something from Amazon. And note that Jeff Bezos for all his supposed “power” cannot put people under arbitrary house arrest, mandate vaccine passports, forcibly shut down his competition or any of the other things politicans did at the drop of a hat in the past two years. Judged that way he really isn’t powerful at all, but the media/public sector class would love you to think otherwise, because if people are busy worrying about CEOs they aren’t busy worrying about the faceless bureaucracies that wield all the actual power.
Yes. There was once a burgeoning, powerful ‘social media’ platform called ‘MySpace’ which became so powerful it disappeared overnight.
“We think Boris is rich and posh but he’s a little leaguer compared to Amazon.”
The posh are nearly always rich, but the converse does not in any sense apply. A bankrupt earl is still posh. A bankrupt lower-class person is just a ‘bankrupt’. And Bezos, being an American, has no ‘class’ in the British sense.
This leads to the paradox that while the posh can often be (genuinely) extremely generous and unprejudiced, this is less often true of the merely ‘rich’, whose ‘generosity’ is really a form of ‘self-protection’ and ‘social’ positioning i.e. ‘philanthropy’.
I think even Sturgeon gets more than Boris, doesn’t she?
A dystopian Pandora’s Box! It is disturbing that tech envisaged as means of communicating between friends or conversing with new ones has become a means of destroying reputations and careers: the Serpent finds a way to corrupt Eden!
I always thought that when Spitting Image was stopped in 1996 because of poor viewing figures it was telling that it didn’t start up again when Blair was elected and provided such a target rich political scene. Can you imagine Spitting Image (of old) tackling Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Death of Princess Diana, the many resignations of Peter Mandleson?
I believe that it is also telling that around this time the comedians given air time were reduced to telling socially appropriate anti-Thatcher jokes.
Perhaps script writers were reading the national mood, but they didn’t want to rock the boat.
Oh for an updated version of Drop The Dead Donkey…
Nobody, because that whole idea is a Guardian fantasy disconnected from basic reality and common sense. Facebook has not been “facilitating genocide in Myanmar” any more than Microsoft or Apple or Qualcomm or Google have. The idea that western tech firms are responsible for any social ill anywhere in the world is merely an ideological weapon, used by the left to beat executives at these companies into submission, until they agree to do anything to make the emotional blackmail go away.
Myanmar’s problems are its own. Mark Zuckerberg is not an alien, he’s an ordinary guy and his “power” is no greater than the editor of any other popular news feed. Real power in our societies doesn’t sit with corporate CEOs or politicians but rather, academics, journalists and bureaucrats.
Myanmar has had many problems since before Zuckerberg was born.
Not least the malign influence of the CCP and of the Rohynga Jihadis. Plus a completely out of control Military.
Facebook is perhaps the least of THEIR problems.
Which is very far from saying that Facebook, Twitter and the rest aren’t a huge problem here.
I’m surprised ‘Person of Interest’ wasn’t mentioned, a very underated show. Not satire as such but it did highlight two competing A(S)Is. An altruistic one created by a reclusive billionaire and the other, a dystopian system acquired by a multi national company in order to shape society without the need for politicians.
I’ll look that up
There were five seasons, the first two are more police procedural type as “The Machine” identifies the PoI, who may be a victim or perpetrator. Within the episodes are the backstories of the machine’s creation and what the US government does to keep it secret. Midway through Season 3, we see the development of the rival AI.
No writer would have conceived of Dianne Abbott’s car crash interview in 2017 with Nick Ferrari, the one when she promised to recruit 4 million more police officers for £2.50.
Another Unherd article with almost no insight and telling us nothing that we wouldn’t expect to read on the BBC’s website. What is Unherd about it?
The author’s social media PR tells you all you need to know. Decoded, it’s ‘I’m one of them’.
Satire is dead because ‘satirists’ like Ianucci and Hislop spout the same centrist, globalist, self-censoring drivel that our political, cultural and legal establishments spout continuously.
Babylon Bee is good for satire, as is Titania McGrath. They’re not mainstream, but satire is better when it’s subversive.
Two reliable sources of laughter for me as well. Tucker Carlson delivers ironic commentary on those wielding power in MSM, social media and politics with a surgical precision that makes satire unnecessary.
Have tech-billionaires assumed the roles of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the Illuminati?
It would seem so, by using their dastardly ‘algorithms’. Of course, anyone who every night goes to bed punctually at 10.30pm and gets up at precisely 6.30am the following morning is a potential world dictator for that very reason.
It is true that our politicians no longer have any power and I think everyone will agree that this is a problem. But who is responsible for it? Isn’t this the widespread leftist philosophy that power is synonym with tyranny and abuse? This philosophy which has deprived the politician of the freedom to exercise his power by creating innumerable standards and judicial controls. Isn’t this left that now don’t find how to make fun of Johnson …