God Bless a Bit of America
The publicity people at ABC TV need a good kick in the pants; one of the top television shows in the world has quietly made its way onto our screens and Aunty should be shouting from the mountaintops and gloating like a spoilt child. The Colbert Report (7.30pm weeknights on ABC2) is straight off the satellite from America and ready-made to make you guffaw. It’s not often that a jaded TV viewer like yours truly gets excited by the box, but this show is the cream of political satire, overflowing with so much wit and intelligence that it makes The 7pm Project look like a banjo-playing mountain boy from Deliverance.
Stephen Colbert, originally a reporter on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is a razor-sharp comedian who can also dance and sing, as he has demonstrated by rapping with Alicia Keys or crooning with Elvis Costello. Colbert’s verbal agility is breathtaking – he reels off tongue twisters with ease – and his egotistical creation adeptly plays the bigot, disguising the generosity, warmth and compassion that is the show’s real perspective. The Colbert Report satirises conservative opinion shows (like The O’Reilly Factor), which fester on the Fox News Channel. Colbert describes his namesake’s character as a ‘well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot’. The show opens with images of American flags and bald eagles set to a Cheap Trick tune and teasers like ‘Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on you again. I am shameless! This is The Colbert Report!’
Colbert’s clever use of language has produced new words like ‘Megamerican’, ‘Lincolnish’, ‘Superstantial’ and ‘Truthiness’ (which is ‘the quality by which one purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or intellectual examination’). Colbert even pronounces ‘report’ with a silent ‘t’ in a megalomaniacal nod to his own name.
Other segments include a health report called ‘Cheating Death with Dr Stephen T Colbert DFA’ and ‘The ThreatDown’, in which Colbert lists the greatest threats to America. Then there’s the interview segment, which begins with Colbert introducing a big star or fascinating author after which he stands in front of them and steals their applause.
The 2010 show has started in high definition – ‘the cutting edge technology of 2007’ – with Colbert performing visual gags that deliberately cannot be seen on standard definition television. Although tender Australian ears may find the hyped-up cheering crowd grating, it is worth persisting with The Colbert Report, because it is one of the funniest and smartest shows on television. Four words, people: do not miss it.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big Issue’.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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