Hit political satire ‘Veep’ back for final curtain call
NEW YORK: When Veep premiered in the middle of Barack Obama’s presidency, its brand of dark satire – and its take on narcissism in American political life – seemed at odds with reality.
Seven years on, the awardwinning HBO comedy – which embarks on its final season tomorrow, midway through Donald Trump’s first term – seems positively prescient.
The sitcom’s wacky storylines of yore are almost charming when compared to the daily barrage of news from the Trump White House.
In season seven, the only one shot since Trump took office, bumbling former vice-president and president Selina Meyer (Julia LouisDreyfus) is once again running for the Oval Office.
And her coterie of incompetent staff are back for more crass laughs, profane insults, wildly inappropriate zingers and hilariously meaningless campaign slogans.
Meyer is facing a number of primary challengers, including onetime White House staffer and longtime nemesis Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons), who is just as useless and infinitely more dislikable.
The final season almost wasn’t – Louis-Dreyfus, who won six consecutive Emmys for the role and is also a producer of the show, was forced to halt filming for months to battle breast cancer.
The action in season seven is intensified by the context of Trump’s America: the rise of the bombastic real-life Republican has lent the show an extra shot of venom – and absurdity.
Over the years, Veep – created by the Scottish writer Armando Iannucci, and taken over in 2015 by showrunner David Mandel – has boasted its fair share of quasi-prophetic moments, including an episode on a government shutdown.
At one point, Meyer uses the slogan “Continuity with Change,” which Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull picked up and used almost verbatim in 2016.
Louis-Dreyfus told a recent media roundtable that predicting reality “started from day one on this show.”
“Thus began this sort of weird, life-imitating-art thing that became a phenomenon of our show,” she said. — AFP