Farewell to crass comedy at the BBC | George Marsden

Conservatives everywhere should be wary of Tim Davie. The Wikipedia article for the BBC’s Director General says that he was once a Tory councillor, and his ideas on reforming the corporation appear to make him bluer than the home counties—but I’m suspicious that he isn’t what he seems. I think there’s cause to believe that he may be a plant; an agent for a leftist conspiracy aiming to keep the top public jobs in progressive hands and then covertly carry out the left’s work.

I’m suspicious because, by cancelling BBC Two’s The Mash Report for its lack of political balance, I think he has just blown his cover. It’s obvious when you think about it; this is too big a win for the left for it to be undeliberate. By keeping Nish Kumar off our screens as one of the left’s most vocal partisans, the British left can sigh with relief…that Nish Kumar is no longer one of its most vocal partisans.

Kumar’s response to the news was (understandably) a bit less jovial than my own. Asked for comment on the decision, he tweeted a photo of himself at his spoof-news desk beside the words “Boris Johnson is a liar and a racist”, which (to be fair) I think is excusable; I’d be pissed off if I was suddenly sacked from a decent TV gig as well. The man’s allowed his moment of anger. But it did strike me that this reaction to the news is typical of the sort of joke you’d get on the programme.

Like almost all the gags on the The Mash Report, this Kumarian take on the news of the day was nothing more than flaccid wit pumped up to resemble something of substance with the help of the Viagra of moral fervour. And a lot of what was said on the show (like his recent “cursed sack of meat” quip about Nigel Farage on the Graham Norton Show. Scorching; how will Farage recover?) didn’t really need much beyond that.

The result of which was a comedy programme that put more effort towards political and moral soundness than being funny; where the intention was to inform and enlighten rather than make you laugh. A good example of what I mean is Rachel Parris’ monologue from series three called “The Guide to Reducing Immigration”. The gags revolve around the conceit that the negative consequences of Brexit are deliberate and part of a Tory policy to reduce migration by making Britain less desirable for migrants. It’s tame stuff making short work out of low-hanging fruit. I imagine plenty of less restrained left-wing comedians think they could do better.

But then something weird happens: the monologue becomes sentimentally nostalgic about the Olympic opening ceremony in 2012 and the values of openness and toleration that it, apparently, represents. The morsels of caustic mirth that the first part of the monologue laboured to produce are all blown away. That tone of moral earnestness (not to mention the longing for something as cloying as the 2012 opening ceremony) couldn’t be further from the sensibility that satire requires, but it cropped up again and again during The Mash Report’s four series.

So, for this among many reasons, The Mash Report was quite simply incompetent comedy. And it’s this fact that makes the fears of Twitter brawlers like Jessica Simor QC and James O’Brien that its cancellation represents a totalitarian crackdown on satirists obviously absurd; the show was so unfunny that it’s impossible to believe Nish Kumar and Rachel Parris were “speaking truth to power”, or that they were even persistent furrowers of Tory brows.

Rather than an injustice, their sacking has all the propriety of a restaurant letting go a pair of waiters who can’t carry soup without spilling it down customers’ backs. Watching the show, I’m not entirely certain that it was satirists that Kumar and Parris actually set out to be; with the sixth-form level wit, and the priority of informing over joking, they seem more like young teachers who fell victim to a clerical error that sent them to the BBC comedy department instead of their TeachFirst assignment.

Although I suppose the oddest thing about The Mash Report is the fact that it was a programme by politically correct liberals (if you will excuse that overused epithet) who were hampered from making the kind of outrageous jokes that would best advance their politics by the very beliefs that make them politically correct liberals. They tried to tickle Britain into (in their opinion) better political health, but the restraint and uncreativeness that follows from their brand of decorum has only left us with four unmemorable series. And that is bloody funny.

If you liked this article and want to help our organisation expand, please consider donating.