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You could've made it up: the best spoof shows ever

Television and radio has always taken itself far too seriously. And the moment that it does, whether it’s current affairs, interview shows, dramas or podcasts, you can be sure that someone will pop up, thoroughly mock it and bring it back down to earth with a bump. Spoofs and parodies provide the vital pin required to prick pomposity and poke holes in preposterous behaviour. Here is a brief selection of some of our favourites…

Down the Line

It seems such a simple idea and yet it is brutally effective. Down the Line takes apart the broadcasting trope and time-filling staple that is the radio call-in show.

Hosted by the ego-brittle, slightly dim Gary Bellamy (played by Rhys Thomas), the callers are such comedy heavyweights as Amelia Bullmore, Simon Day, Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse, who semi-improvise a selection of bizarre contributors and lightly damaged members of the public, desperate to voice their opinion.

As evidence of its parody credentials, Radio 4 received complaints after the first show in 2006, as listeners didn’t spot that it wasn’t real.

Listen to Down the Line: Lockdown Special and Down the Line - Sounds Exclusive

On the Hour / The Day Today

Starting out on Radio 4 (as OTH) before moving to TV (TDT) Chris Morris is the arch news and entertainment skewerer, managing to locate every pompous and preposterous element of current affairs and inflate them until they squeak.

Baffled politicians, ridiculous stings and painful silences all collide to form a gloriously ludicrous stew. Both shows feature another iconic parody figure: Alan Partridge.

Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge

The East Coast Listening Post

The word of podcasts is relatively new, but has still managed to adopt sufficient tropes and cliches that allow it to be rigorously spoofed.

The East Coast Listening Post, created by comedy sketch duo Lazy Susan, takes the tone and texture of your favourite NPR podcasts (such as This American Life) and other US big-hitters (like Serial) and sequesters them within a travelogue show featuring vocal-fried American hosts unearthing the fake delights of quaint British culture.

The East Coast Listening Post was created by comedy sketch duo Lazy Susan.

Look Around You

Sometimes a parody can take a blistering broadside at the subject it’s spoofing and on other occasions it’s the specificity and obvious affection that makes it unforgettable.

Look Around You pays homage to the educational TV films that are all nestled somewhere deep in our collective psyches and celebrates their gentleness and weirdness.

Created by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, the initial 10 episode run of 10 minute shorts that aired in 2002 on 大象传媒 Two is almost perfect television.

Agendum

The echo chamber that inhabits the current rolling news farrago is a prime candidate for parody and Radio 4’s Agendum exposes all the flaws, hypocrisies and time-filling mundanity of what passes for news these days.

Talking heads and experts churn on and on, Twitterstorms are analysed, dissected and sanctified while oranges are taken down a peg or two.

Acorn Antiques

Housed within the magisterial confines of Victoria Wood’s 1980’s 大象传媒 sketch show As Seen on TV, Acorn Antiques lovingly (and viciously) parodied slightly shonky soap operas such as Crossroads and Waggoners’ Walk.

Sets wobbled, lines were stepped on and cues were missed. The acting was as wooden as the fake chesterfields. But it was one of the most enjoyable things ever televised.

Acorn Antiques Health Spa

The former cast of Acorn Antiques reveal the difficulties of turning it into a health spa.

Radio Active

Britain’s beloved first national local radio station, which aired on Radio 4 in the 1980s, took all the incongruities of broadcasting and fired them right back at their paymasters. Vapid, egocentric DJs and presenters desperately tried to eliminate dead air with quizzes, human interest features, religious moments and general inanity - usually helmed by a man called Mike.

Listen to Radio Active

Radio Active

Delve Special

During the mid 1980s, there was only one man who could be trusted to right wrongs, expose corruption and get punched in the face by a disgruntled despot. That man was David Lander, better known as Stephen Fry, a fearless and fairly clueless Radio 4 reporter determined to get to the bottom of scandals, discrepancies and unforeseen malarky.

Lander wasn’t the most competent investigator out there, but he was certainly one of the loudest.

Stephen Fry as incompetent investigator David Lander.

The Mrs Merton Show

Like a velvet glove cast in iron, sometimes the most effective parodies appear innocuous but possess hidden depths… and fangs.

So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?

The meek and sweet Mrs Merton (played by the great Caroline Ahern) appeared to be a humble, inquisitive northern housewife hosting a fairly rubbish talk show on 大象传媒 Two (starting in 1993).

But the programme was brilliant at subtly, and brutally, butchering its guests, summed up by the famous one-liner to Debbie McGee: "So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”

Caroline Aherne as host and elderly agony aunt Mrs Merton. (Credit: 大象传媒 Two)

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

A spoof within a spoof, this critically lauded, if little seen, (devised by Matthew Holness) sent-up 1980s sci-fi and horror, but also lampooned the critical consensus aimed at such shows, featuring contemporaneous (fake) interviews with the programme’s stars (played by Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade amongst others) reminiscing about the experience. Expert terrible special effects, unexpected music videos and a side of Romford you have never seen before.

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