EP35. Satire, "Party-Gate" & The End Of The World

Smith & Waugh Talk About Satire

As the fabric of the social contract in Britain further disintegrates in the wake of increasingly outrageous revelations about behaviour behind closed doors at 10 Downing Street during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Jo and Adam talk about the one divisive topic that's really gotten everyone really raging in this cold, miserable month of January: Adam McKay's Netflix original movie Don't Look Up! Is it too smug? Is it too simple? Is it too self-satisfied? Is it too satirical, or not satirical enough? These are the questions that polarised everyone over the holidays, and they're the questions Adam and Jo are wading into in this episode, which takes as its theme the end of the f*cking world. They also talk about Ben Elton's 1989 satirical novel Stark, which tackles very similar ground to McKay's film only with "total toxic overload" as the catastrophic and unstoppable threat to human civilisation rather than a huge flaming meteor that everyone can literally see coming. And, of course, they'll also reflect on satirical responses to Party-Gate. They just hope the PM can hang on long enough for this episode to come out and still be relevant...