It’s one of the clichés of modern times that the Trump presidency is beyond satire – it’s so inherently ridiculous that nothing satirists can do can possibly trump Trump.
That’s not quite true. Plenty of shows mock Trump every day and we’ve had the likes of the self-explanatory Our Cartoon President (US: Showtime) built entirely around sending him up. The Good Fight (US: CBS All Access; UK: More 4) has also done a decent job of mocking Trump’s input into the US’s legal and political systems:
However, most of the mockery is largely targeted at the man himself. His policies, meanwhile, are normally so horrifying that no one can think of anything funny to say in response. Maybe in that sense Trump might be beyond satire.
So you’ve got to hand it to Netflix’s new comedy, Space Force, for at least trying to satirise an actual policy position of Donald Trump – namely Space Force, for those of us who have been avoiding the news as much as possible. The question is: is this first real stab at Trumpian policy satire good or even funny?
Co-created by and starring Steve Carrell (The Office (US), Anchorman, The Daily Show, The Morning Show), Space Force sees Carrell playing a newly promoted 4* Air Force general at the height of his game. His predecessor and general bête noire Noah Emmerich (The Americans, The Spy) is about to retire and Carrell is set to replace him.
However, almost immediately, Carrell learns he is instead set to head up and largely create from scratch Trump’s Space Force, with the perpetual aim of ‘boots on the Moon by 2024’! That means moving to Colorado, something about which his wife, Lisa Kudrow (Friends), and teenage daughter (Diana Silvers) are not 100% jubilant.
Soon, Carrell is butting heads not just with chief scientist John Malkovich but with science itself, as he learns that reality has a liberal bias.
Remember Josh Gad’s Reunited Apart? It’s an online series that showcases charities working to provide resources during the lockdown. Hosted by Josh Gad, each episode reunites the cast and crew of classic movies.
The first of these were The Goonies (1985) and Back to the Future (1985), but he’s only gone and done another two!
Episode three reunites Splash (1984)’s director Ron Howard, producer/creator Brian Grazer, and stars Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah, as well as a few special guests (clue: Schitt’s Creek‘s Eugene Levy is one of them).
Episode four then ups the ante by going after the cast of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That features (for starters) Sean Astin, Elijah Wood, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd, Orlando Bloom and Ian McKellan, as well as writer/director Peter Jackson. Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler, Karl Urban, John Rhys-Davies and Andy Serkis later on.
And Taika Waititi. And some others. It’s a double-length episode. Are you surprised?
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