Article Fake News Comedy Shows
Type: Satire.
Summary: A brief history of “fake news” comedy shows.
Posted by: Elliot Feldman
Before Jon Stewart
While “The Daily Show” hits its targets more often than not, the line between “fake news” and real news seems to be blurring a bit in recent months. Show host Jon Stewart’s targets have become too easy and his guests have become too erudite and too much the insider. Even though Stewart’s give-as-good-as-you-get exchanges with Senator John McCain are classic, most of his other guests of late have leaned far away from comedy and hard toward “wonkdom.”
“The Daily Show’s” predecessor, the still running “Saturday Night Live Weekend Update”, hasn’t been on target since Norm MacDonald was “fake anchor” in the nineties, but that’s a personal opinion only.
Blame it all on the Brits
“Fake news” comedy shows officially began in 1883 with the “Cambridge University Footlights”, an annual satiric stage revue. More current alumni have included author Douglas Adams; Monty Pythons Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and Eric Idle; and “The Daily Show’s” John Oliver.
The first Brit fake news sensation to cross the Atlantic was the 1960 London stage revue “Beyond the Fringe” starring Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller. Cook and Miller were also former Footlights members.
“That Was The Week That Was”
The first television fake news comedy series was BBC’s “That Was The Week That Was”, written by the likes of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Peter Cook, Dennis Potter, and Kenneth Tynan. Starring Bernard Levin, Roy Kinnear, and Millicent Martin among others, the show debuted in 1962 and only lasted a year; but it made a lasting mark on comedy, especially during the British government’s Profumo sex scandal.
Like many successful English comedy series, it soon spawned an American version, which also ran for a year, 1964 to 1965. American cast members included Henry Fonda, Henry Morgan, Gene Hackman, Buck Henry, and Alan Alda.
Other Brit fake news shows
“Not Necessarily the Nine O’Clock News” launched the career of Rowan Atkinson and Pamela Stephenson. The American version “Not Necessarily the News” was one of HBO’s first comedy series.
The British series “Spitting Image” took fake news to a level beyond talking heads. The show starred puppets that were grossly exaggerated caricatures of political and pop culture personalities. In essence, it was a live-action political cartoon. The series lasted from 1984 to 1996. The American version, “D.C. Follies”, didn’t fare as well.
The central problem with “fake news” as a concept is that, over time, fake news often becomes real news and vice versa. After all, these days, various Fox local owned and operated television stations throughout the country commonly include crime re-enactments with actors as part of news broadcasts.
References
- “Before Jon Stewart”, Robert Love, Columbia Journalism Review
- http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/T/htmlT/thatwasthe/thatwasthe.htm
- http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/N/htmlN/notthenine/notthenine.htm
- http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/spittingimag/spittingimag.htm
