PUPPETS AS GOOD AS EVER BUT GAGS HIT ROCK BOTTOM
WE LIVE in a time when we’re offended by everything yet shocked by nothing, so where does that leave Spitting Image 2020? Does Donald Trump’s extendable tweeting anus do it for you? We’ll come back to the anus, I promise.
With politics in meltdown, the world reeling from crisis to crisis and life turning on a dime on a daily basis, reviving the puppet-based satire that so memorably nailed the Thatcher era looked a solid gold idea.
First, the good news: the puppets are as brilliant as ever, with Dominic Cummings as a vein-throbbing alien overlord and Priti Patel as a horn-haired dominatrix among the highlights. Creators Peter Fluck and Roger Law have lost none of their bite when it comes to
Figure of Thun: caricature. But there’s bad news too: the jokes, though topical to a tee, relentlessly miss their targets.
You’d think Trump and Boris Johnson, who inevitably dominate proceedings, would be sitting ducks, but the writing is so flabby it makes Ant & Dec’s Santander ads feel like a comic masterpiece. Which leaves the funnies to the peripheral characters. That the highlight is Greta Thunberg as a furious-looking weather forecaster spitting ‘hot!’, at the screen speaks volumes about how laboured the political gags are. ‘Donald Trump talks out of his arse? Hey, let’s have his arse actually talking’ – I did promise you the anus - is hardly the pinnacle of comedic subtlety.
In an effort to make this something other than the Trump and Johnson show there are random swipes at Sir David Attenborough and New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, plus a mildly amusing dig at sporting hypocrisy in the shape of Lewis Hamilton.
But they’re a diversion in a show dominated by dumbed-down shock tactics which backfire badly. And no, that’s not an anus reference.
The depressing thing is, when you get down to it, it feels as if Spitting Image has only been revived as subscription clickbait for Britbox. Now that’s what I call shocking and offensive.