It seems preposterous that after 20 years there’s anyone left on the planet who could be taken in by Sacha Baron Cohen (pictured with his with Isla Fisher)
One minute he’s a square-jawed Israeli military expert who wants to arm three-year-old children; then he’s a pony-tailed ultra-liberal progressive who shares his wife with her dolphin lover; then a blond Right-wing blogger on a mobility scooter who claims he got three diseases from Barack Obama’s health care reforms.
The conversations these characters engage in on screen are so preposterous that surely someone will smell a rat, but —astonishingly — they don’t.
It seems preposterous that 20 years after he first posed as Ali G — the boorish suburban rapper who hoodwinked the likes of Tony Benn, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Buzz Aldrin — there’s anyone left on the planet who could be taken in by satirist impersonator Sacha Baron Cohen. But there are.
The star is back in a new series — Who Is America?, which airs on Channel 4 tonight — with his features caked in heavy prosthetic make-up, his body swathed in the occasional fatsuit and his posh London accent camouflaged by American drawls.
This time, he’s set his sights on mocking U.S. politicians — mainly conservative ones, unsurprisingly, since he is very much at home in liberal Hollywood. But critics are asking whether he has finally gone too far.
The new series has left one of its red-faced victims, Sarah Palin no less, apoplectic. The former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate is claiming loudly she was duped into talking to Baron Cohen, 46, after he posed as a wounded military veteran.
She’s dubbed him ‘exploitative’ and ‘evil’. It’s not yet clear precisely what he got her to say, but we do know — thanks to footage leaked online — that he persuaded Dick Cheney, George W. Bush’s vice-president, to sign a plastic gallon jug which the comic describes as ‘my waterboard’ — in reference to the torture practice alleged to have taken place under Bush’s regime.
On screen, Cheney hands it back to Baron Cohen saying: ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever signed a waterboard.’
So how much trouble could the outrageous comic have landed himself in? Supporters of some of those he’s duped are calling for him to be prosecuted for impersonating a military veteran, although he insists he never did so. Under the Stolen Valour Act, it’s a crime punishable by up to 12 months’ imprisonment.
In the first episode, the socialist firebrand Bernie Sanders sits down with ‘Billy Wayne Ruddick’
Having seen the first episode, I can confirm that Baron Cohen could deserve a prison term for crimes against good taste. In what could be described as ‘squirm TV’, his tactics are even more extreme than in the past as he tests how far people will go in tolerating what he says before ripping off their microphone and walking out.
One of his characters is a Cockney ex-con (Baron Cohen with a long beard and lisp), who tries to persuade a blonde California gallery owner to exhibit paintings he did using his bodily fluids.
Then there’s a creation called Nira Cain-N’degeocello, a pot-bellied ultra-liberal who has dinner with a wealthy and inscrutably polite Trump-supporting couple in South Carolina who, he says, ‘suffer from white privilege’.
After making them join hands for a Native American chant instead of grace, he tells them: ‘In our yurt we try to challenge the gender stereotypes.’
But has this ridiculously right-on liberal character of Nira been included simply so Baron Cohen can say that he is satirising both sides of America’s toxic political divide, not just Right-wingers?
If the first episode is any guide, the seven-part series will be manna from heaven for Left-wingers outraged by the Trump era. Just don’t expect to see Baron Cohen try to send up the Obamas. When Left-wing politicians do appear, it’s largely so they can look horrified by some Right-wing character he’s created.
In the first episode, the socialist firebrand Bernie Sanders — who fought against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 — sits down with ‘Billy Wayne Ruddick’, an offensive blogger on a disability scooter who proceeds to make a series of offensive and block-headed remarks.
One of the most provocative segments is when Baron Cohen poses as Colonel Erran Morad, an ex-Israeli commando in Washington to promote ‘Kinderguardians’, a new programme to teach children as young as three how to handle guns to protect themselves.
In one truly appalling segment, after telling a gun rights campaigner — Philip Van Cleave — that arming children any younger than that isn’t ideal because of the ‘terrible twos’, the ‘colonel’ persuades him to appear in an instructional video for toddlers, using a handgun decorated with a stuffed toy called ‘Puppy Pistol’ to show how to ‘stop those naughty men and have them take a long nap’.
Sarah Palin claims claims she was duped by Baron Cohen ‘who had heavily disguised himself as a disabled U.S. veteran, fake wheelchair and all’
Baron Cohen tries to get conservative politicians in Washington to endorse his jaw-dropping programme. Incredibly, a clutch of former and serving Republican congressmen are happy to help, including former Republican Senate Leader Trent Lott, and another who is prepared to say on camera that ‘in less than a month, a first grader can become a first grenader’.
No wonder conservatives are — for want of a better phrase — up in arms. Sarah Palin claims she was approached by a speakers’ bureau for what she thought would be a ‘thoughtful discussion’ to honour American veterans. Instead, she claims she was duped by Baron Cohen ‘who had heavily disguised himself as a disabled U.S. veteran, fake wheelchair and all’.
She says she ‘sat through a long ‘interview’ full of Hollywoodisms, disrespect and sarcasm — but finally had enough and literally physically removed my mic and walked out, much to Cohen’s chagrin’. She says she became suspicious when Baron Cohen suggested Chelsea Clinton was having a sex-change operation at taxpayers’ expense.
Mrs Palin is demanding the comic, and the broadcasters airing the series, donate all proceeds to a veterans’ charity. She went on: ‘The disrespect of our U.S. military and middle-class Americans via Cohen’s foreign commentaries under the guise of interview questions was perverse.’
Mrs Palin made sure she flagged up that her tormentor is from the UK — Americans never like being mocked by sneery Brits. She has challenged ‘shallow Sacha boy: go ahead — air the footage. Experience tells us it will be heavily edited, not pretty, and intended to humiliate’.
Baron Cohen responded in a letter posted on social media under the pseudonym of his Billy Ruddick character. In familiar sarcastic style, he wrote: ‘I did NOT say I was a War Vet. I was in the service — not military but United Parcel, and I fought for my country once — when I shot a Mexican who came onto my property’.
Needless to say, all the outrage has only played into the hands of Baron Cohen, who hasn’t even needed to publicise his new series by giving interviews (though he always gives interviews in character anyway). Even before the first episode aired in the U.S., it’s become one of the most talked about TV programmes this year.
But this time the question is whether the too-clever-by-half Cambridge graduate has really gone too far for his own good.