Comedy

David Beckham proudly displays his controversial fashion statement from back in 2007 – the vagina grafted into his arm. Charlotte Church remembers getting so drunk she puked herself inside out. And we’re shown a clip from ‘Spicey Slicey’, the Beeb’s cosmetic surgery show for kids, in which a child announces ‘I’m going to have my chin enhanced so I look like Clare Balding’. From the vantage point of 2031, 2007 looks pretty strange. This is the promising premise of Armando Iannucci’s new series ‘Time Trumpet’, which combines clip-show spoofery and queasy flights of fancy to paint a satirical picture of the surreal dystopia that awaits us. A motley bunch of semi-lookalikes have been recruited to portray today’s celebs 25 years hence and they’re augmented by ‘cultural commentators’ including Stewart Lee, Richard Ayoade and Jo Enright.

Although the approach is generally fairly scattergun, there also seems to be the hint of a narrative framing the series. During the first episode, despite some prompting (‘he had a sort of melting face’), Enright has no memory of David Cameron. Tony Blair, meanwhile, is to be found wandering dementedly among the bins of downtown Baghdad. What can have happened to these two political adversaries in the intervening period? And why has Gordon Brown suddenly affected such an avuncular demeanour? Feature continues

It’s trademark Iannucci and in its best moments, it’s a worthy addition to his rightly acclaimed canon of inventive and pointed satire. There are times, however, when every frontrunner slips back into the pack. Elements of ‘Time Trumpet’ feel laboured and a bit self-satisfied, and in the wake of such obviously Iannucci-derived shows as ‘Broken News’, there’s also a danger of the comedic lingua franca, which he helped establish, becoming slightly overfamiliar. However, producer Adam Tandy bridles at comparisons. ‘You could say the same thing about the Channel 4 News,’ he argues. ‘Its last incarnation looked exactly like ‘The Day Today’. It’s hard to disagree, but equally hard not to regret the fact that such magnificent satire had so little positive effect on the quality of our public discourse.

However, what ultimately saves ‘Time Trumpet’ – and indeed most of Iannucci’s work – from unbecoming smugness is the endearing silliness at its core. Reservations aside, it’s hard to take serious issue with a show that imagines ‘Newsnight’ rebranded as ‘Honey I Shrunk Martha Kearney’ and gives the aforementioned reporter a helium squeak for a voice. ‘The satire comes out of his interest in politics,’ says Tandy, ‘but Armando just likes making silly programmes.’

Time Trumpet, Thur, 3rd Aug, 10pm-10.30pm, BBC2