Spitting Image

[Fambo Number Mive]

Hancock gets off even lighter than Johnson. Apart from mentioning the many issues with Test and Trace, there's barely any criticism of how the government have handled the pandemic.

[Hand Solo]

It's shit and watching latex gangling puppets of politicians opening and closing their mouths tickles a part of your brain when you saw one funny sketch when you were 7 *something funny must be going on* that's about it.

[beanheadmcginty]

In episode 3, the Prince William puppet says to his kids (who are holding shotguns) "That's it kids, fire at will". And the kids don't fire their guns at him, which is surely the obvious joke. Why did he say that particular phrase if that wasn't the joke?

[Alberon]

In episode 3, the Prince William puppet says to his kids (who are holding shotguns) "That's it kids, fire at will". And the kids don't fire their guns at him, which is surely the obvious joke. Why did he say that particular phrase if that wasn't the joke?

Probably was the original joke before the lawyers got twitchy. Inciting gun violence against our lizard overlords or some similar sort of bullshit.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Watching Episode 4 now

- Boris Johnson gets punched by

Spoiler alert

a boxer

[close]

I don't recognise.
- Michael Gove goes to

Spoiler alert

Paris

[close]

. Totally humourless. Two sketches, in one of them

Spoiler alert

Macron licks Gove

[close]

.
- Once again the only satire Matt Hancock (the worst, most horseracing obsessed and most petulant health secretary since the founding of the NHS) gets is "he goes and stands behind the plant".
- Liked the Biden sketch that hinted at him being

Spoiler alert

an (alleged) sexual predator

[close]

and made clear how crap he was. Refreshing for a show to show that Biden is nearly as bad as Trump.
- Like creepy Jared and the Mitch McConnell sketch.-

[Retinend]

I think it's been great so far. I really hope they keep up this level of quality and can stick around for the long haul. We need it.

[evilcommiedictator]

Why isn't the puppets doing something like this amazing piece of hate-swearing?
https://twitter.com/TheIDSmiths/status/1318937947627016193

[idunnosomename]

I guess there was a mistake in it cuz he deleted it. Hope it comes back soon

I was singing "im uh a alien. Im a babyeatin alien"in this shower this morning

[idunnosomename]

ok works now.

IDSmiths should be making television. really got a sense of timing and bathos

[Retinend]

If you've watched "Emily in Paris" the sketch "Gobey in Paris" is hilarious, especially the musical pastiche. It's just like the music they use in that show.

And can we all just admit the puppets are funny to look at? I never get tired of the way they sculpted Trump, or Boris with his wig, or Elon Musk's weird head. I feel like they ought to get a second series just for the visuals. The show ought to have a lot of viral success, in theory, since everything is so "GIFworthy".

[petril]

If you've watched "Emily in Paris" the sketch "Gobey in Paris" is hilarious, especially the musical pastiche. It's just like the music they use in that show.

And can we all just admit the puppets are funny to look at? I never get tired of the way they sculpted Trump, or Boris with his wig, or Elon Musk's weird head. I feel like they ought to get a second series just for the visuals. The show ought to have a lot of viral success, in theory, since everything is so "GIFworthy".

they'd probably save a lot on costs by just having an imgur gallery intead of a broadcast series. run a ko-fi for donations and they'll probably get enough cash to just make the puppets on the regular.

someone else can pay to licence them for a telly show and they can take all the risk then. sorted

[kidsick5000]

You'd really expect it to be funnier.
Or funny.

[the hum]

And can we all just admit the puppets are funny to look at?

No, we can't, because they're not particularly.

[Retinend]

We're 4 episodes in. What are you guys hanging around here for?

[Fambo Number Mive]

Because it's interesting to discuss comedy that we dislike as well as we like.

[Retinend]

I do that sometimes too, but usually if something is so bad it's good, or if the person who made it is someone you love to hate. If there's no entertainment value for you in the puppets and you don't get the references, why persist? As much fun as it is for you to discuss your hatred for it, there are some people who would like to discuss what they like who you are scaring off.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

It's a high-profile revival of a classic British comedy show, so it's an interesting thing to discuss whether you like it or not. I appreciate that this is my only contribution to the thread so far, but that's because I don't really have anything to add. I've enjoyed reading it.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Well I certainly don't want to scare anyone off, I'm sorry if that's been happening. I have liked some of the new sketches but most have been a disappointment.

I'm probably jaded by my anger at the government which seem to be facing no real cultural opposition. Look at the anger from musicians and comedy against Thatcher and Major. Even under Blair and Brown Bremner Bird and Fortune was pretty scatching of New Labour but since Cameron got in there's been hardly anything. I'm probably expecting too much of the show but I do wish it was as scathing of Johnson as it is of Trump (and recently, of Biden which I thought was refreshing given how much shows like SNL seem to lick his buttocks).

I'll try to focus more on the sketches I like (of which there are at least one to two per episode).

I think the original Spitting Image books, like the BBF book, are the kind of scathing I was hoping for, but that's probably a little unrealistic these days.

[Alberon]

The puppets are generally okay, but sculpting Gove's face with a cock and balls is genius.

[SOMK]

It was mentioned in the Chris Morris interview with Buxton, how back then the BBC had an almost air of contempt over ratings, all that really mattered was you were making something of some kind of merit.

The counter culture of the 80's was incubated, they were the people who grew up under the fairly liberal grants system of the 70's that was one of the things that was nuked under neoliberal Thatcherism (and evangelics in the US losing their minds over piss christ), the last wave of which came under the whole brit pop thing, which was initially a bunch people on the dole who had the time to muck about and make music (how the 'happy Mondays' got their name and all that), under new labour it became more welfare to work and since the 90's there's been a noted increase in the percentage of private school educated acts in the top 10 (John Harris's decent book on Britpop mentions how Alan McGee successfully lobbied New Labour to making some kind of temporary allowance for people on the dole who were creative to be given some kind of leeway, some shite like being given six months to make your living from it or something before we start cutting you off for turning down jobs with Mcdonalds).

A core manifestation of Neoliberalism is the reclamation of the urban commons, it's said you could live fairly easily in London on no income, not even the dole, living off edible just-past sell-by-date supermarket produce from their bins, staying in squats etc., in the 70's and people did that, they did their time in that realm, didn't stay there, but it's exactly that kind of forced intimacy environment where new ideas can emerge, there's no such thing as an arts movement that didn't have some mutual base of being, a place where people could live in each other's pockets, have in-depth discussions and so on, be it the Salle de Bain in turn of the century Paris, or the sub culture around New York in the 70's, Madchester, even Nick Land's cybernetic Culture Research Unit. There's nowhere today for the counter culture to go, no soil for it to emerge from, the nearest equivalent are all those very preppy nova media types angling for media jobs or the last few cushy gigs in academia.

Iannuci and Morris came of age in a BBC/media culture that could indulge them studying and then riding off how news was made. These days everything is measured and nothing is nurtured. People fart away their creativity into the dust bins of twitter, instagram and Tik Tok, where you have to do numbers in the thousands if not millions to get any kind of living from (and where the numbers game/dopemime hit factor encourages people to play to the audience which is the fucking death rattle of creativity "if I asked people what they wanted they would have asked for a faster horse"). The media has become a culture of people who give good job interviews, who know the right thing to say to get past whatever gate keeper stands before them. The fact that we live in times that more than ever demand real satire and yet we seem incapable of producing it fits to a degree, the same system that gives you media creations like Johnson (ie. the kind of people you almost need a good satire against) also gives you Matt Fords, or even the kind of shit film/TV culture we have where you've got people who have studied structure to death but never existed beyond their own little bubble it becomes a kind of paint-by-numbers culture.

There was a vested interest in the west to create 'good' culture circa the cold war, the abstract expressionists were CIA funded as propagandist examples of western freedom, little or no interest now, the wall came down and the beauty contest ended, give it a few years though we may see something new emerging from the lockdown culture, alternatively move to Norway (excellent grants system), Berlin, or possibly Athens (apparently the next big one, once Berlins becomes completely unaffordable).

I suppose it's endemic of how something like this is needed or desired, that this page is currently the most popular in comedy chat, irrespective of how hopeless the show itself is.

[the hum]

The puppets are generally okay, but sculpting Gove's face with a cock and balls is genius.

I'll give them that one to be fair (although 'genius' feels like an overstatement), but on the other hand the Johnson one for example, as I think others have alluded to, is basically a re-creation of exactly the caricature he'd already created for himself. He's literally just a 3D version of one of those 'fun' portraits beloved of cariacture artists. The Trump one is in some ways even worse. It's vaguely grotesque yes, but largely innocuous at the same time. Apparently the original Spitting Image team had serious aspirations of bringing the government down. Naive for sure, but the intent was there and, for the first few years of its existence at least, it came across in the execution. Not by any means all the time mind; the original was hit and miss, but the hits were that tremendous you could overlook the misses.

When the show's creators become the target of far more effective biting satire themselves (e.g. IDSmiths stuff) it ought to serve as pretty big red flag.

EDIT: oh aye and the Matt Hancock one, Christ alive, even Russell fucking Howard has done a better job in conveying what an utter creep he is.

[Retinend]

It's a high-profile revival of a classic British comedy show, so it's an interesting thing to discuss whether you like it or not.

I don't want to be the tone police... this forum is the home of harsh comedy criticism. And thanks for the sincere response, Fambo... It's just that it's getting to the point where I almost don't want to share my enthusiasm for the show, this thread is getting so full of nay-sayers.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm younger than most of you and I only just started watching the original Spitting Image episodes a month or so back. Whether in its original or current incarnation I love its artistic style and combination of surreal and brutally cutting humour.  Like everything I love about Private Eye. And on that note, I can confidently say, having just watched the first 2 series, that it was never unconditionally anti-Tory. It was just equal-opportunities vicious all around, and knew that it was funnier to attack those in power than those without (though it didn't spare the luckless Kinnock shadow cabinet either). It was always full of pop culture figures too. Tayor Swift and Grimes are in this series; Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney were in the first series.

[evilcommiedictator]

Great paragraphs SOMK ++Karma

[JesusAndYourBush]

I liked it.  For me it's the best one so far.

But who was the car alarm singer supposed to be?

Well after this weeks episode I now know it was Adele, from the multiple appearances this episode, dead horse well and truly flogged.  Is Adele current, then?  She appeared to retire several years ago and I've not heard a peep out of her since.

[Glebe]

Well after this weeks episode I now know it was Adele, from the multiple appearances this episode, dead horse well and truly flogged.  Is Adele current, then?  She appeared to retire several years ago and I've not heard a peep out of her since.

Hosted SNL last week.

[ajsmith2]

Great paragraphs SOMK ++Karma

Seconded. 'Twas a fantastic read.

[Retinend]

Well after this weeks episode I now know it was Adele, from the multiple appearances this episode, dead horse well and truly flogged.  Is Adele current, then?  She appeared to retire several years ago and I've not heard a peep out of her since.

You're out of touch, my friend. Her weight loss is indeed a massive touchstone for pop culture right now.

[Retinend]

[Retinend]

- Michael Gove goes to

Spoiler alert

Paris

[close]

. Totally humourless.

[Retinend]

Totally humorless so long as you don't get it.