I watched Spitting Image so you don’t have to
The newly revived classic is deeply unfunny and borderline embarrassing.
I did not laugh, not once, while watching the new Spitting Image. The show, originally known for its crude satire of the Thatcher years, revels in giving offence. So much so, in fact, that it forgets the need to actually be funny.
Donald Trump lies in bed with his wife Melania, who advises him on how to spell ‘covfefe’. Remember that amazing zinger, all the way back from 2017? When the president goes to sleep, a penis-like appendage emerges from his anus, continuing to tweet.
Dominic Cummings, who is an alien, asks Boris Johnson if he would like to fire him. When the latter declines, Cummings asks if he can eat the PM’s baby. When rejected, he proceeds to consume some ‘earth snacks’ and asks, again, if his boss will fire him, to which the answer is still no. Cummings asks if the PM is sure that he cannot eat the baby, and whether Johnson would fire him if he did. Yes, ok, we get it, he really doesn’t want to fire him. Haha.
Trump and Biden arrive for the first presidential debate. The moderator, Chris Wallace, informs us that the event is being hosted at a geriatric clinic, the only line which elicited from me as much as a smile. Trump chucks a shoe, then says ‘fake news’ a bunch. Biden almost falls asleep and forgets where the camera is. The two proceed to shout over each other since, you know, that’s what they did.
Priti Patel, a vampiric dominatrix, visits Michael Gove, who asks her for some ‘unpopular conservative opinions only you can get away with’. Here’s how that unfolds:
‘We must limit all immigration, except for Israelis’
‘Ohhh, you can say it, because you’re Asian’
‘If single mothers can’t afford babies, they should have abortions. If they want abortions, they shouldn’t have had sex’
‘Yesss, you can say it, because you’re a woman’
The joke, if you aren’t able to tell, is that the Conservative Party uses women and minorities as a front for controversial social policy. Except that’s not exactly true, is it? The party has campaigned on immigration for decades, long before Priti Patel made it to the front bench. Indeed, one of the most ardent critics of immigration during the EU referendum was... Michael Gove! And on abortion, the most prolific Conservative politian on the subject is not a woman or a minority of any kind, but Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The skit is potentially offensive, just probably not in the way the writers had intended. It suggests that minority figures in positions of power have no real agency. That their ‘controversial’ policy positions are instead some clever trojan horse engineered by their white overlords.
At a cabinet meeting, Matt Hancock appears to critique the government’s university lockdowns, before Patel tells him to shut up. Hold on, isn’t the Health Secretary among the most vocal supporters of those restrictions? Surely the point of caricature is to mock reality? Apparently not.
The show’s ‘groundbreaking’ satire then attempts to target ‘woke culture’. Trump arrives at a medical lab, where researchers are studying the coronavirus. One of them tries to educate the president on how clinical trials work. Trump does not understand and asks Mike Pence to ‘mansplain’ it to him, which is, well, not what ‘mansplaining’ is. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson pays a visit to quarantined students. He breaks out a bong, to which one responds that ‘smoking marijuana is cultural appropriation’. What?
Donald Trump tries to negotiate with the coronavirus. He names it as his vice president, and then the virus spits on him. The joke is that Trump got COVID. Lying sick in his bed, the president asks (via Twitter) whether anyone has bleach that he may drink. The joke is that he once suggested injecting disinfectant.
David Attenborough does not know how to use Instagram. The joke is that he’s old, I guess. Jacinda Ardern, for some reason dressed as Mary Poppins, performs a song and then murders a suspected COVID patient. The joke is that… honestly I’m not exactly sure.
To be clear, I don’t have an intrinsic problem with shock humour. It can be funny if it has a point. If the jokes are actually trying to say something. Spitting Image is not trying to say anything. The punchlines, if you can call them that, often boil down to ‘wow, remember when that happened, crazy right?’
Perhaps I am being unfair in judging the show so harshly on the basis of one episode. Who knows, maybe the material gets better. I doubt it.
Spitting Image is simply dreadful. The ‘satire’ makes no sense, the jokes fall flat and the shocks lack purpose. It exists solely to get you to subscribe to Britbox, the struggling Netflix competitor launched by the BBC and ITV. It tries to provoke but ends up committing the most unforgivable sin of all, which is to be boring. I’ve heard the original is better, so go watch that instead.
