The Times columnist Hugo Rifkind’s new three-part satirical series, about who in modern Britain has power (3 May, 11:30am – episode one is about MPs), makes use of a very specific Radio 4 form: the pre-scripted monologue recorded in front of a studio audience, delivered in a manner that looks for laughs but isn’t trying overly hard for them. It sprinkles in a few recorded interviews – like slides, or props. “You may have noticed that, lately, MPs haven’t been doing what they’re told,” says Rifkind, lightly.
The whole thing is done at a supremely mild level. He’s not expecting us to bust a gut. So you don’t get any of that exhausting, up-and-down magic-show tension that you get listening to a Jerry Sadowitz. There was one roar, at a joke about Facebook. “It’s like a cocktail party that exists inside your computer and someone’s invited loads and loads of racists”. And a little gasp at former Conservative chief whip Andrew Mitchell’s deathlessly pithy phrase: “The whips are not moral or immoral; they are amoral.”
Content from our partners
