Spitting Image is back on the screens of the BritBox UK streaming service this fall, with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the Duke of York among those who will be ridiculed as puppets.
The satirical TV show, made famous in the mid-80s, will also target Donald Trump, Beyonce and Boris Johnson.
This is the first original BBC order and ITV streaming service.
Co-creator Roger Law is on board as executive producer, and has said he has refused to re-screen the show so far.
“I refused to revive Spitting Image for years, but when my pension ran out and my palm was crossed with money, what could an old man do?” he joked.
“The new spitting image will be global through a purely British eye, it will be more scandalous, daring and salacious than the previous incarnation.”
The program originally ran from 1984 to 1996 and included Margaret Thatcher in costume, the Queen Mother’s drinking gin and Ronald Reagan in bed with two red call buttons, marked Nurse and Nuke.
The show was watched by 15 million viewers at its peak and was nominated for a host of Bafta and Emmy awards.
Around the broadcast of Spitting Image at 30 Special Half Hours in 2014, Newsnight described the influential show as “a hybrid of Cambridge lighthouses, English caricature and Punch and Judy”.
The series was scheduled to return to ITV in 2016, but failed to materialize after a dispute over the Ant and Dec puppets used to host Best Ever Spitting Image.
- Spitting Image plots return after 23 years
The new series will also mock Vladimir Putin, Bernie Sanders and the Prime Minister’s chief political adviser Dominic Cummings, as well as celebrities like Adele, Kim Kardashian, Greta Thunberg and Jurgen Klopp.
In a statement, program officials said, “As the world becomes smaller and more turbulent, the timing could not be more appropriate for an iconic British satirical rendition of world events.”
ITV television director Kevin Lygo said he was “delighted” to be able to give “British creativity a real boost”.
The anarchic show that packed a punch – and 15 million viewers
- Spitting Image was created by cartoonists Peter Fluck, Roger Law and Martin Lambie-Nairn
- At its peak, it drew an audience of 15 million viewers
- He has been nominated for nine BAFTA Television Awards (two winners) and four Emmy Awards
- Much of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet was parodied, with Douglas Hurd depicted with “Mr Whippy ice cream” hair, and his successor John Major caricatured as a dull gray puppet with a penchant for peas.
- World leaders have also been stereotypical, with Mikhail Gorbachev’s forehead birth mark redrawn like a hammer and a sickle
- The series was discontinued in 1996 due to declining audience numbers
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