SHOWS DIVE INTO POLITICS FUNNY BONE- FIRST
Difficult times call for Difficult People. In the opening minutes of the acerbic Hulu sitcom’s third season ( now streaming), Julie ( Julie Klausner) and Billy ( Billy Eichner) are stopped by a man looking for a newly erected Donald Trump statue in New York. Revolted, the struggling actors dump trash in his car.
It’s a seemingly throwaway gag that sets the tone for Difficult People’s most politically charged season yet, joining the ranks of comedies to address the Trump administration head- on.
Comedy Central’s The President Show, wrapping its first season Aug. 24, stars Anthony Atamanuik as the commander in chief giving his version of a fireside chat, while the network’s Broad City promises to bleep Trump’s name in its upcoming fourth season. (“There’s no airtime for this orange ( person),” co- creator/ star Ilana Glazer says.)
And Showtime this fall plans a 10- episode, still- untitled animated series, executiveproduced by Stephen Colbert and set in the White House.
The comedy will feature computergenerated versions of the president and Cabinet, with a loose structure that allows for a portion of each episode to be written mere days before airing.
“I’m hoping we’re going to do a show that will piss off everyone a little bit,” says Showtime president and CEO David Nevins.
The workplace comedy “will attempt to reflect the inner life of this character, so people will try to understand that and Stephen’s take on it. I expect it to be unexpected.”
The cable network follows late- night talk shows and series that have had a field day spoofing the current head of state.
After the election, “it’s not like we had this conscious decision ‘ Let’s do a show about Trump,’ but of course we were open to it,” says Comedy Central president Kent Alterman. “We heard an unbelievable ( number) of pitches that were responding to Trump, and it was everything from reality shows to fake reality shows to scripted shows to animated shows. There was a plethora of ideas coming at us from a number of different directions and the only barometer was that we didn’t want to do anything just for the sake of it.”
Rather than depict the president himself, Difficult People satirizes day- to- day life in the Trump era. Julie, for instance, is forced to get prescriptions at a Quiznos doubling as a free clinic in an alternate universe where Obamacare has been repealed.