Above and beyond
SCOTTISH WRITER AND SATIRIST ARMANDO IANNUCCI REUNITES WITH HUGH LAURIE … IN SPACE
When Armando Iannucci tied the knot some 20-odd years ago, his wife required him to make just one solemn vow. And it had nothing to do with loving, honouring or obeying her.
“My wife made me promise I would never go into space,” he laughs.
“Because she was worried I might, you know, die. But as it happens, I am a terrible traveller, so the idea of going up into space and just floating around makes me cringe.”
And so, rather than taking a rocket ship to the stars, Iannucci must contain his space exploration solely to the writers’ room of Avenue 5.
The Scottish satirist’s follow-up to his brilliant White House parody Veep reunites him with Hugh Laurie. But this time, instead of playing a smarmy presidential aspirant, Laurie is the beleaguered captain of a space tourist ship that has veered dangerously off course.
Captain Ryan Clark (Laurie), while looking dapper in his uniform and heralded a hero, is actually woefully underqualified for his position and reliant on his far more capable staff to help him manage the crises.
Just like Veep and another of Iannucci’s hits The Thick of It, Avenue 5 offers hilarious insights into the machinations and manipulations of powerful people.
Throughout his career Iannucci, who is also the mastermind of the character Alan Partridge, has consistently skewered big egos; be they politicians, celebrities or captains of industry and, in this case, spacecrafts.
Iannucci laughs that Avenue 5 is more “space fact than fiction” because while the events all take place 40 years in the future and in the far reaches of space, the scenarios are very much rooted in real life.
“It’s our addiction to screens and to the artificial world and to stories, that’s fed into it,” he says.
“(We also examine) how easy it is for crowds now for groupthink to take place and conspiracy theories to grow and the importance of image.
“These are all issues that have been around for millennia and it’s all about how they are being dealt with today and that informs how we deal with them in the show.”
Given the series focuses on how people behave (often badly) in a crisis, a lot of Avenue 5 feels as though it has been ripped from the news headlines of the past two years.
But in actual fact, season one debuted a few weeks before the pandemic really took hold and plunged cities around the world into lockdown; making the scenarios Iannucci and the writers devised somewhat prophetic.
“I think, when we wrote it (season one), kind of in my head,
I was thinking some strange times are coming,” he says of writing Avenue 5 ahead of the chaos of Covid.
“And if you watch it again (now), you think: ‘Ahh right, yes they’ve come.’
“What you do as a writer is you’re hypothesising something, but it’s based on an educated guess as to where things might go.
“So, I’m glad that, you know, we got some things right. I just wasn’t expecting them to be confirmed so soon.”
Series two picks up with Captain Clark (now outed as a fake) struggling to keep control. But back on Earth, people are riveted by what is taking place in the skies above; watching the drama unfold on their televisions. It’s a scenario that once again mirrors real life. “There’s so much streaming content now that companies are raking around any story that’s been in a newspaper or magazine and asking themselves how they can turn it into a 10-part Netflix show,” he laughs.
“And so, I thought that’s an interesting area (to explore).”
Since Avenue 5 first aired in 2020, space tourism has become an increasingly realistic proposition with the likes of Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie and Leonardo DiCaprio shelling out big dollars to soon take a ride into outer space.
At 90 years of age, William Shatner, who is best known as James Tiberius Kirk, captain of Star Trek’s fictional spaceship
USS Enterprise, was the first Hollywood star to bravely go where no one has gone before; blasting off in 2021.
But just because you can doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Iannucci feels it would be better for powerful people to focus their time and money on this planet rather than the great beyond.
“Science fiction really, and any sci-fi writer will tell you this, is about the present,” he explains.
“It always is a comment on the present day.
“So, my inspiration is from now. And yes, it’s helpful to the (believability of the) show that (Elon) Musk, (Richard) Branson and (Jeff) Bezos are so highly public with space programs.
“It’s helpful. I mean, but it’s a bit odd that they should be spending time on that rather than on saving the planet.”