Rupert Murdoch in the original show; current caricatures Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, James Corden.
It’s late on a Sunday night in the mid-1980s. I’m waiting for the end of the “Movie of the Week” that the commercial networks still screen.
My TV guide has a red ink circle around a British show that has somehow infiltrated Kerry Packer’s 51st state that is Channel Nine, a world of wall-to-wall “Dynasty”, “Remington Steele” and “Knight Rider”.
I’ve read about this satirical puppet show, “Spitting Image”, in English magazines like NME and The Face. Just as the magazines take about three months to appear in the local newsagent, there’s been a wait of almost two years for this show to hit our screens.
I’ve just got over the excitement that the national broadcaster finally screened the Britcom “The Young Ones” a mere three years after its debut in the UK. A way around this delay, perhaps some nefarious online downloading, is still decades away.
“Spitting Image” is produced by the caricaturist duo, Luck and Flaw (Peter Fluck and Roger Law). They’ve added producer John Lloyd (fresh from the topical sketch show “Not the Nine O’Clock News”) and a puppeteer from “The Muppet Show”, Louise Gold, to their team. It’s equal parts black, double-entendre and cruel.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is depicted in grotesque puppetry as ruling over a cabinet of schoolboys. Her trade secretary Norman Tebbit is by her side, lampooned as a leather-jacketed skinhead.
American president Ronald Reagan is played for laughs. The chimp from his 1951 film “Bedtime for Bonzo” is in bed between him and wife, Nancy.
Reagan spends the still-Cold War days making anonymous heavy breathing prank calls to the Kremlin on the White House “red phone”. Every Russian character lurking in the background bears a likeness to former leader Leonid Brezhnev.
Recent repeat viewings of 1980s “Spitting Image” episodes on YouTube are a reminder how brutal the show can be. Its satire isn’t always coated in sugar.
South African President P.W. Botha is cold, stark, and proudly wears a badge with the slogan “Anti-Anti-Apartheid”. Fictional social commentator/scandalmonger/conspiracy theorist Harold Angryperson screeches his rants in a segment called “Criminal Libel” (“the show that tells the truth”).
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Harold is shown only in silhouette, eerily resembling the missing Earl, Lord Lucan. The vocal delivery (by Chris Barrie from “Red Dwarf”) channels the Young Ones’ character Vyvyan Basterd. It’s interesting that Ade Edmondson, who played Vyvyan, fills in for Barrie in one episode.
“Spitting Image’s” killer takedown, though, is of media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. Just as Thatcher was in a battle to crush the National Union of Mineworkers, Murdoch was taking on British print unions. He moved his newspapers to electronic production in his new base at Wapping, London, in a bitter, and often violent, dispute.
Murdoch is presented as an uncultured oaf, in particular excessively flatulent. His fawning editors are depicted as sheep (lap) dogs. His puppet familiar hosts its own segment, “Gracious Living with Rupert Murdoch”.
This dispenses tips including “how to be sick in the presence of a member of the royal family”. It’s hard to recall anyone with the audacity – and courage – to satirise him as caustically in the ensuing three-plus decades.
Which brings us to the 2020 version of “Spitting Image” that debuted on a streaming service in October.
The Queen and Xi Jinping have started a breeding program between her corgis and pangolins. Liverpool FC manager Jurgen Klopp is gently mocked for his unwavering optimism, James Corden’s habit of saccharine ingratiation exposed more cuttingly.
Mike Pence’s puppet appears to have blue skin and devil horns, while British cabinet minister Michael Gove seems to have dangling testicles for cheeks.
Just as Margaret Thatcher dominated “Spitting Image” in the 1980s, Donald Trump is the undoubted focus here.
When he’s not hanging out with his new buddy, ‘Corony’, he’s receiving electric shocks from his phone every time he’s fact checked by Twitter. The breakout star though is … Trump’s anus.
The stretched sphincter sinew becomes a separate character, responsible for all those tweets in the middle of the night. It even threatens to leave Trump for a role on the morning cable news show “Fox and Friends”.
But hey, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Like in the ‘80s when it took years for that era of “Spitting Image” to hit our shores, it’s similar with the 2020 version.
It’s distributed by BritBox, the online streaming service partnership between the BBC and ITV. Unfortunately, they’re still getting ready to launch in Australia sometime later this year.
A second series has already been greenlit, but in the meantime, here you can only legally watch small vignettes on YouTube. That’s not really helpful when it’s a news satire show that thrives on its immediacy for relevance.
