Despite Britain's long and noble tradition of ridiculing authority figures in
literature, theatre and political cartoons, British television was slow to
discover satire. This largely reflects the conservatism of the medium in
its early days and the duty of impartiality imposed on broadcasters by
successive governments. The aggressive political interviewing of today was
unimaginable in the 1950s, when politicians were treated with utmost respect,
and the function of the interviewer was to listen patiently while MPs explained
their party's policies.
The roots of TV's first dabbling with satire are easily traced to the 'satire
boom' kicked off in 1960 by Beyond the Fringe - the stage revue which introduced
Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller - quickly followed by
the launch of Private Eye magazine and Peter Cook's ironically-titled Soho
nightclub The Establishment. But the circumstances that led to this sudden
flowering of irreverence are less clear.
In part, it was an expression of frustration with the extraordinary
conservatism of the 1950s, a decade which had seen unbroken Tory rule from 1951,
and in which the programme of social renewal begun by the postwar Labour
government had been halted or reversed. One event has been cited as a
particularly important factor in undermining Britain's apparently instinctive
deference for its leaders. 1956's Suez crisis forced Britain to acknowledge for
the first time its much declined global status, and gave the British cause to
question the wisdom and judgement of their government.
Despite the folly of Suez, the Conservatives were still very much in power in
1962, when the BBC began to explore the idea of "a new sort of revolutionary
programme... a mixture of News, Interview, Satire and Controversy", as producer
Ned Sherrin proposed it. In the context of the time, That Was the Week That Was
(1962-63) really was something like revolutionary. It was met with as much
outrage as delight, but it proved impossible to ignore. For future Conservative
PM Edward Heath, the show was to blame for "the death of deference". Many
agreed; most felt it was about time, too.
Despite - or because of - its success, TW3 lasted barely a year, pulled from
the schedules by anxious BBC executives, who argued that it would be
inappropriate to air such a show in an election year. Nevertheless, the series
was credited by some for Labour's 1964 election victory.
Initial attempts to recreate TW3's success proved unmemorable, but presenter
David Frost's own series, The Frost Report (BBC, 1966-67), though less
explicitly political, did include some sharp satirical asides. The series is
most notable, however, for uniting much of the future Monty Python team. Monty
Python's Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-74) was the culmination of a trend away from
satire towards surrealism, absurdity and formal experimentation, but although
the Pythons demonstrated far less interest in party politics than their
predecessors, they expressed the same frustration with antiquated class
hierarchies, while pompous military officers and the like appeared
frequently.
Aside from rather tame political caricatures from the likes of Mike Yarwood
and Stanley Baxter, satire was largely absent from 1970s schedules. However,
after 1979's election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, political
comedy began to re-emerge, growing progressively angrier as the new decade wore
on. The intelligent sitcom Yes Minister (BBC, 1980-82) brilliantly nailed the
dynamics of Whitehall, but the series' exposure of civil service manipulations
played well with the Thatcherite constituency, and the PM herself was a
professed fan.
Not the Nine O'Clock News (BBC, 1979-82) was brasher and less respectful,
with pot-shots at racist police, seedy high court judges and, unusually, the
royals, although in many respects the series was fairly conventional post-Python
comedy. In a similar vein was A Kick Up the Eighties (BBC, 1981-84), chiefly
remembered today for introducing Rik Mayall's first television incarnation,
Kevin Turvey.
Mayall was the first of the new 'alternative' comedians to break into
television. Initially centred on another Soho club, The Comedy Store,
alternative comedy was anti-racist, anti-sexist, determinedly anti-Thatcher and,
for a change, largely non-Oxbridge. Nevertheless, the first TV expression of the
scene, The Young Ones (BBC, 1982-84), for all its youthful energy, was more
radical in form than in politics, and in Mayall's character Rik, actively mocked
'right-on' campus lefties. More aggressively leftwing were Ben Elton and Alexei
Sayle, who shared a confrontational, 'ranting' delivery, while Mayall's sitcom
The New Statesman (ITV, 1987-92) presented a monstrously corrupt Tory
backbencher, a suitable herald for the impending 'sleaze' era.
The satirists of the 1980s notably failed to remove Thatcher - although the
grotesque puppets of Spitting Image (ITV, 1984-96) may have inflicted a few
wounds, even if the show's scripts didn't always match their satirical bite -
and though the Iron Lady eventually toppled, the Tories soldiered on. Drop the
Dead Donkey (Channel 4, 1990-98), the first satirical product of the John Major
era, highlighted the vacuity of cable television news, but, despite its
cynicism, the series was noticeably less fierce than its 1980s predecessors, and
the satire seemed something of an afterthought to the straight sitcom character
comedy.
1994's The Day Today (BBC) - a series born, like much 1990s comedy, on BBC
Radio 4 - also concerned itself less with party politics than with the media,
specifically the arrogance and pomposity of TV news and current affairs
reporting. Presented by the alarmingly talented Chris Morris, and introducing to
television Steve Coogan's highly successful Alan Partridge character, The Day
Today combined a razor sharp parody of contemporary news presentation - all
slick graphics and booming melodrama - with a skewed, warped humour darker than
anything thrown up by Python.
Aside from the Alan Partridge shows, The Day Today spawned two further
satirical series, the cynical but genial Saturday Night Armistice (BBC, 1995-98)
and Morris's notorious Brass Eye (Channel 4, 1997; 2001). Arguably the bravest
satire ever seen on television, and certainly the angriest, Brass Eye broadened
its targets to include not just a self-regarding media but an inane,
rent-a-quote celebrity culture, and confirmed Morris as a satanic figure in the
eyes of the tabloids.
Morris's most striking innovation - the bogus 'interview' exposing the vanity and credulity of celebrities and politicians - was extensively borrowed by The 11 O'Clock Show (Channel 4, 1998-2000), which introduced Ali G and The Office's (BBC, 2002-04) Ricky Gervais, although the series' sledgehammer approach largely substituted abuse for satire. More directly engaged was the 'comedy activism' favoured by American filmmaker and writer Michael Moore, in his UK/US co-productions Michael Moore's TV Nation (BBC, 1994-95) and The Awful Truth (Channel 4, 1999-2000), and by Britain's own Mark Thomas in his Comedy Product (Channel 4, 1996-2002).
The two most enduring satirical shows of the age of New Labour reflect the
prevailing cynicism about political parties of all colours, while offering
surprising connections to satire's earlier eras. The current affairs quiz Have I Got News For You (BBC, 1990-), another product of Radio 4, thrives on the banter between the inspired reactive comic Paul Merton and his co-star Ian Hislop, the latter not only once a writer for Spitting Image, but also the current editor of the now venerable
Private Eye magazine. Rory Bremner, whose Bremner, Bird and Fortune (Channel 4,
1999-) has presented TV's most sustained opposition to Blairism, also
contributed to Spitting Image as a voice artist, while his co-stars John Bird
and John Fortune (aka The Long Johns) were regulars on the stage of Peter Cook's Establishment club.
Mark Duguid
Further Reading
Carpenter, Humphrey, That Was Satire, That Was: The Satire Boom of the 1960s (London: Phoenix, 2000)
Crissell, Andrew, 'Filth, Sedition and Blasphemy: The Rise and Fall of Television Satire' in John Corner (ed) Popular Television in Britain (London: BFI, 1991)
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