Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Whatever happened to Spitting Image? Whatever happened to the truly anarchic satire that had the so called great quaking in their boots at the thought that at least some of the decisions they made on behalf the British population might be held up to the kind of scrutiny in which they would at least have to grin and bear the extra publicity or come out looking even more foolish than they do?
Arena – easily one of the best arts programmes on television has never really shied away from this type of documentary and over the years has had some great insights into the world of art and those that inhabit the domain. In this latest offering, it celebrated the radical and revolutionary Spitting Image, Whatever happened to Spitting Image? looked at the people behind the finest programme that bought politicians of every shade to book.
Peter Fluck, Roger Law and John Lloyd combined to make something incredible and Arena managed to capture the moments in this special documentary in which the satirical boot kicking, mocked at first but one in which soon took on a life of its own and saw that nobody was safe from its mocking, least of all the governments and politicians who frequented the same period of time as the 15 million people who watched the renegade puppetry at its height.
The only problem with a programme that deals with the nostalgia, no matter how well presented, is that it makes you long for those days once more. The days in which the events of the week were carefully captured by the lines of Steve Nallon (Margaret Thatcher), Chris Barrie (President Ronald Reagan), Kate Robbins, Hugh Dennis, Harry Enfield and a whole host of other critically excellent voice artists took on characters as diverse as The Queen Mother (with her own Brummie accent in a wonderful allusion to Beryl Reid), Frank Bruno, Tony Benn, Lester Piggott, Frank Bough, President Reagan and Francois Mitterrand didn’t last beyond 1996 but what great pleasure it took every week in one respect of casting the then Prime Minister of Great Britain as a cigar smoking megalomaniac.
The great thing of course that then there were personalities who could take the joke and they were personalities in the truest sense, they were, for the most part, interesting and unlike a lot of politicians 30 years on, the programme would suffer for the lack of colour in the world. The programme wouldn’t get shown now, not for want of any great political or social satire but because the world has become very bland. Whatever happened to Spitting Image? Grey has beaten the puppets to death.
If only the programme could come back though, just imagine how much fun there could be had on a Sunday night if you knew those in the very positions of power, the likes of a certain member of parliament who makes noises about the disabled and the poor, if he was lampooned without mercy by Spitting Image today?
Ian D. Hall