One of the irritations of having twentysomethings in residence is that my TV-viewing preferences are often overruled. Thus I find myself sitting through shows I would never choose to watch if our sons weren’t around.
So it was that the other night, I endured episode four of The Mash Report, the new ‘comedy’ series singled out for praise this week by the BBC’s deliciously named entertainment commissioning editor, Pinki Chambers.
‘With up-to-the-minute analysis,’ said the blurb on the electronic channel guide, ‘Nish Kumar and a team of hilarious correspondents keep you up-to-date with everything that has happened — and not happened — this week.’
The Mash Report: 30 minutes of balls-achingly predictable, formulaic, smug, politically correct juvenilia, written and performed by right-on conformists
There followed 30 minutes of balls-achingly predictable, formulaic, smug, politically correct juvenilia, written and performed by right-on conformists to the BBC’s world view, who seemed to have not a single unhackneyed idea in their heads.
In fairness, I should say that I may have caught a particularly duff edition (even our 24-year-old admitted it was ‘dire’). For all I know, episodes 1-3 were sparklingly original and side-splittingly funny.
Enough to say that I’m not prepared to find out. Though I take my duty to readers seriously, nothing on Earth would induce me, after sitting through one instalment, to catch up on iPlayer with the three I missed.
I plead the clause in Britain’s 1689 Bill of Rights, copied in the eighth amendment to the U.S. Constitution — the one that outlaws ‘cruel and unusual punishment’.
Of course, I know there’s little point in arguing that something isn’t funny if a lot of people think it is. Humour is a matter of subjective taste, after all. But when others fall around in stitches over material that leaves us cold, we must at least be entitled to express our bewilderment.
Speaking for myself, the sort of joke I find amusing is the Bob Monkhouse classic: ‘They all laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian . . . [perfectly timed pause] . . . ‘They’re not laughing now!’
Now compare that gem with The Mash Report’s ‘up-to-the-minute analysis’ of the cancellation by Labour’s London Mayor of the Thames Garden Bridge project championed by his Tory predecessor.
Echoing the old nursery rhyme, one ‘hilarious correspondent’ intoned: ‘Garden Bridge is falling down/ Falling down, falling down/ Garden Bridge is falling down/ F*** off Boris Johnson.’ End of joke.
I hate to sound like an old-fashioned schoolmarm, but is that in any way clever or funny? Are there really people who still weep with mirth at the mere utterance of the ubiquitous F-word (enunciated in full on the show), thinking it the pinnacle of wit?
In the Sixties and Seventies, shows such as That Was the Week That Was poked fun at an Establishment that was still vaguely Right-wing – today the left-wing is the Establishment
Apparently so, if we’re to judge by the gales of laughter from the studio audience, who howled like four-year-olds reduced to hysterics by the words ‘willy’ or ‘bum’. But unfunniness aside, it was the sheer staleness of The Mash Report’s format and content that struck me most forcibly.
Take its drearily predictable choice of targets: Donald Trump, Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Davis, Boris Johnson, the Daily Mail — anyone remotely Right-wing or pro-Brexit.
These were all the usual suspects, sneered at week in, week out, by self-righteous contributors to almost every BBC comedy programme, from The Now Show and The News Quiz to Mock The Week and anything featuring Jeremy Hardy or Marcus Brigstocke. (I absolve Have I Got News For You, because I like Ian Hislop, and Paul Merton is a comic genius).
Heaven knows, I wouldn’t wish to stop anyone from poking fun at this paper or any other. Still less should Mr Trump be protected from ridicule.
As for Boris, he sets himself up to be laughed at. So, too, does Mr Rees-Mogg — though I don’t believe he has ever said or done anything to justify the vicious and sarcastic attack on him by a feminist on this week’s Mash Report: ‘He really does conjure up an image of an imperialist, racist overlord but one who knows how to tip his hat at a lady and I appreciate that very much.’ (Cue more audience hysterics.)
I yearn for something different – a comedy programme that breaks the mould of monotonous BBC Left-wingery
No, all I am saying is that, like so many licence-fee payers, I yearn for something different — a comedy programme that breaks the mould of monotonous BBC Left-wingery.
Will Pinki and the entertainment department never employ anyone who can see that the earnest and utterly humourless Guardian is as absurd as any Right-leaning paper — more so, I would say?
Just for a change, how about leaving the Brexiteers alone and turning the Corporation’s comic guns against the frankly hilarious hysteria of Remoaners such as George Osborne and Nick Clegg?
Isn’t there also huge comic potential in mocking Jeremy Corbyn, the student revolutionary who never grew up and can’t bring himself to condemn terrorists or hard-Left South American dictators?
It strikes me that somebody could also make a very funny show, poking fun at the snowflake generation. These are the young devotees of programmes such as the Mash Report, who spend their lives tearing down statues of long-dead military or colonial leaders, ‘no-platforming’ guest speakers with whom they fear they may disagree — and scurrying off to ‘safe spaces’, quivering like jelly, at the faintest suggestion of a ‘micro-aggressive’, politically incorrect remark.
How, I’ve often wondered, will these snowflakes ever reproduce, for example, when a suitor risks charges of sexual harassment if he dares tip his hat at a girl, or tell her he fancies her? The BBC could make a whole sitcom series about them.
But no, in Pinki’s book it appears compulsory to stick to the tired old formula and the tired old targets, pushing a tired old line of relentless political correctness.
Not The Nine O’Clock News attacked the right-wingers at a time when it was fresh and original to do so – not anymore
Can this be the same woman who announced this week that she would commission no more panel games, on the grounds that the formula was ‘tired’?
(I notice that this didn’t stop the BBC from commissioning, only last week, a female-oriented panel show for Radio 4, Where’s The F In News. Feminists on the radio, eh? There’s original!)
Indeed, what I found most depressing about the Mash Report was its unoriginality. For the fact is the show is hugely derivative of the satirical programmes of my youth — That Was the Week That Was, The Frost Report, Not The Nine O’Clock News etc, with the odd touch of Monty Python surrealism thrown in.
But there was one big difference. In the Sixties and Seventies, shows such as these poked fun at an Establishment that was still vaguely Right-wing.
Judges, quango chiefs, senior police officers and the rest tended to be conservative in outlook. You could even find a fair few Right-wing teachers and dons — as rare as hens’ teeth in 2017. It seemed fresh and also brave to take a dig at them.
By contrast, today’s Establishment figures are almost all card-carrying members of the politically correct elite. Even the outgoing head of the National Trust is obsessed by gay rights.
So when Nish Kumar delivers his pious PC sermons to camera, he is not being brave or interesting. He is speaking with the authentic, grindingly familiar, monotone voice of the Establishment.
For example, this was his take on Mr Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville riots: ‘I can’t believe it is 2017 and we are still having to say this, but people who fight Nazis are not the same as Nazis.’
For reasons I cannot fathom, even this banal observation provoked hoots of sycophantic laughter. Oh well, maybe I’m just losing my sense of humour, along with my hearing, eyesight and teeth.
One thing’s for sure: a comfortable future awaits the bright young things on The Mash Report. For even if their comedy careers fail to take off, there will always be other publicly-funded jobs for them at somewhere like the Equalities Commission or the Health and Safety Executive.
As conformist representatives of the new Establishment, they should fit in nicely.