mr_sepia_tone

Spitting Image is coming to DVD in 2008 - in series order - which IMHO is great news...

Spitting Image: The Complete Series 1: Network DVD

Outlander

Coooool - I never understood why oit finished - and why they have never brought it back. OK - the grey lady was great but they could have had a field day with Blair & Bush and imagine Gordon Brown!!

Glad to hear of the repeats - Bring it back I say!!

Steve Crook

I wonder why?
OK, it was all very clever, but how many people will remember the people being satirised?
Even the dreaded Mrs T is just a figure from history to many people nowadays

Steve

DB7

Hasn't one of the original producers blocked remaking it? I see to recall there was some troubles over the recent anniversary show.

mr_sepia_tone

There are a lot of people out there, that will remember the series, I'm sure...

You could say the same about anything released on DVD, that's more than a decade old... we don't all forget, not completely, anway... and very much doubt, that 'Mrs T is just a figure from history to many people nowadays' - and surely not all those, that lived through her premiership, IMHO.

All sorts of people, not just the satirisation of politicians, had the pee taken out of them... so plenty there for everyone...

mr_sepia_tone

I don't think so... Politically correctness is the reason. You couldn’t make a programme like this (which is politically incorrect) in this day age and get away with it (not my thinking, BTW)... I don’t agree, and would love to see its return, to Sunday nights...

DB7

No, Fluck and Law feared it would be celebrity-obsessed rather than satirical and topical, then when Ant and Dec puppets were created for the anniversary show (without approval) they went ape.

Steve Crook

Have you seen Dead Ringers?
Although they tend to deal more in "celebs" than politicians.
There is still quite a lot of satire around in clubs and in Private Eye. It's not political correctness (or the lack of it) that stopped it being on TV. I think they just ran out of targets when politicians stopped having personalities

Steve

DB7

Spitting Image loses the latex but stays satirical and sharp
Adam Sherwin Media Correspondent

Politicians will come to dread Sunday nights again when ITV reinvents Spitting Image as a computer-animated show with a fresh mandate to be merciless.

So many suffered at the comic hand of Spitting Image’s latex caricatures that the only ignominy worse than being lampooned was to be excluded.

Twelve years after the programme ended, Spitting Image’s head writer, Henry Naylor, and Rory Bremner are preparing to show Headcases, a new £2.5 million topical satire show in the same ITV Sunday night slot.

Instead of puppets, Gordon Brown, Amy Winehouse and Prince William, among others, are captured using CGI-animation in the style of films such as Toy Story.

Robert Mugabe, Alistair Darling, Piers Morgan, Fabio Capello, the Beckhams, Nicolas Sarkozy and Dmitry Medvedev, presented as Vladimir Putin’s puppet, are among those on the cast list, which is limited to 64. But Jack Straw, Ed Balls, David Davis and Vincent Cable failed to pass the producers’ “public recognition test”.

Boris Johnson is banned until May, much to the writers’ disappointment, under electoral broadcasting rules. Headcases would have had to include Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat candidate in the mayoral election, which could have hit the show’s ratings.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, may not be flattered by her depiction. She is awarded a prodigious bust which expands and contracts in line with the terrorist threat to Britain.

Gordon Brown is portrayed as a miserable Dickensian penny-pincher. He is tricked by Tony Blair into throwing a celebrity Downing Street party. But only Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse turn up when his henchman, Alistair Darling, whose catchprase is “We’re doomed”, gives the invitations to the Revenue & Customs to post. Mr Brown then sells his dissolute guests lager at 15p a can.

David Cameron is an Etonian toff with a sinister sneer. He is constantly undermined by his “squirt”, a school-capped George Osbourne and William Hague, who downs 17 pints of bitter and bangs on about Europe.

Music will play its part, with “Old Mugabe had a Farm” featuring the Zimbabwean tyrant destroying the country’s agriculture.

Actors’ movements are digitally captured to create the high-quality animation, which will be produced by Red Vision, of Manchester. Episodes will be completed hours before transmission to maintain a topical edge. The voice artists include Bremner, Katy Brand and Lucy Porter.

The series begins next week and lawyers are poring over a sketch in which Lord Coe seeks British athletes to take part in a “drug Olympics” as the only way to win medals at the London 2012 games. Inevitably, Winehouse and Doherty answer the call.

Naylor said: “It is bold of ITV to commission a new satire in the Spitting Image slot with a high political content. When Spitting Image was at its peak there were great ideological divides. But surveys today show that most people can’t recognise who is in the Cabinet. Part of our mission is to make politics accessible to people.”

This time round, politicians share top billing with celebrities from many other spheres. Saurabh Kakkar, ITV Controller of Comedy, said: “Thank God for Heather Mills McCartney.” Sir Paul may not share the sentiment.

The cast

Nicolas Sarkozy Medallion-man who performs Mr Boombastic for the Queen

Gordon Brown irritated by spoof calls from Tony Blair

Wills & Harry Speak in painful street slang and order ham and caviar pizza

Bob Geldof seeking tagging device for daughter

Nick Clegg tries to learn balancing trick with a peanut

scholes

This I will look forward to.
Anything written by Rory Bremner will be worth watching, still Political with a bit of Celeb thrown in.

image45

I still have an off-air VHS I made in 1989 of the Christmas Special with the adverts from that time. Because I have a good memory of that time I recall why peope are been being satirised and its nice to have it as broadcast rather than edit for DVD due to some rights issue!

"Seya next time!"

Mark O

..........and there were me thinkin' Ant & Dec were Puppets!

Mark

batman

Someone at work, the other day, referred to them as Pants and Dreck .... I had not heard that before and it made me laugh, a rare event at work!

There are 31 excellent quizzes to bamboozle you on the Quiz Page. Just click on the 'Quick Links' icon and scroll down!

sirtokealot

teenage mutant ninja condoms were my favourites, i remember a year or so ago they were auctioning off all the heads someplace in london. they will be worth loads once the dvd comes out and people want all that stuff again

Dai Bando

I remember buying a spitting image squeaky toy of Mrs T just so my dog could bite the nose off, he did too (pity it wasnt an effigy).