Remember before the world was in utter chaos? No need, it wasn't heaven on earth, but it did have a great satiric comedy TV show to take the edge off. Ah yes, read on . . . The hilariously biting and stingingly witty "Spitting Image" creator Roger Law recently wrote to tell me that the show's timely revival (two Trump years in the making), premiering tomorrow on Britbox in the U.S. and around the pandemanical globe, "will ridicule political figures from both the right and the left." And why not? It's not about blue and red but the battle between honesty and ignominy. Of course, the right in the U.K. and U.S. is curiously packed with more of the latter (ignominy-asses) and less of the former. So conservative politicians have been featured heavily in previews of the hysteric and hysterically caricatured puppets, including in the snippet below.
Law, who has long been the king of rubber wit and satiric puppetry, furthermore, wrote: "I can't tell you how boring it is avoiding the virus, so in many ways I'm glad I signed up for another Spitting Image nightmare. It's a steady pace seven days a week just to get all the work done, so it really does take your mind off the virus." And it just may vaccinate us against the bug and the buggers. At least it will put us in a happy place, despite the world that's falling in around us, right Kanye!?
The show is written by Brits and Americans, "and is smart and intelligent and possibly funny," writes Law. Perhaps its just a coincidence that Boris Johnson has just installed two people at the top of the BBC hierarchy, both of them extremely right-wing, with revolting track records. Hmmmm.
For those of us vintage enough to recall "It does not seem as sharp as 'Spitting Image 1' because political correctness has changed people's attitudes," Law admits, a sizable number of the original viewers may have lost their memories anyway. Law says about PC: "Some of this is good … but it's also very odd; you meet people who you think are liberals but where humor is concerned they are most censorious. In my limited experience, you don't change much by shouting at people (believe me, I've tried) but on a good day, humor can turn people."
