Just over a million people have watched the premiere of Sacha Baron Cohen’s new series, ‘Who is America?’
The mokumentary-style series that delves into America’s political discord premiered Sunday night at 10pm on Showtime.
In the series, Baron Cohen inhabits four different characters that span the political spectrum – from a gender studies professor at a liberal arts college to a right-wing conspiracy theorist.
Disguised as one of his characters, he convinced many political big names, including Dick Cheney and Bernie Sander, to sit down for interviews.
More than one million people have watched the premiere of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s (left) new show ‘Who is America?’ in which he portrays four characters that span the American political spectrum (including Col. Erran Morad, an ‘anti-terror expert’, right)
According to Nielson, 327,000 people tuned in for the first airing of the pilot – just under a third of the total audience for the time slot.
That audience grew by 375,000 for the four subsequent re-airings of the episode on the network.
Another 301,000 viewed the first episode online, according to Showtime, bringing the total number of viewers to just over one million. Showtime added that Sunday was their biggest day for signups to its streaming service this year.
For the series, Baron Cohen (right) tricked many political big names to sit down for interviews under the guise of his characters, including Bernie Sanders, left
The show also scored a 0.1 rating for the 18-49 age demographic, which the Hollywood Reporter described as ‘modest’.
The premiere still came up short compared to Showtime’s flagship shows like Homeland and Shameless, which regularly average above one million viewers.
The network did very little marketing for the show, releasing their first preview just a week before the series debuted.
Most of the attention was drummed up by Matt Drudge, who tweeted Tuesday that Baron Cohen ‘is at it again’ and had tricked several politicians into sitting down for interviews on the show.
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was among those hoodwinked, and was outspoken in her disgust for the comedian.
Palin called Cohen ‘sick’ and ‘evil’ for portraying a disabled veteran to dupe her into talking to him.
Showtime refuted Palin’s claims, saying Cohen did not wear military garb to their interview and at one point specified that he was not disabled.