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Few of those working in television are as ripe for either parody or praise as Adam Curtis. That he receives less of each than he deserves is most probably because, like a writer who discusses large and important topics but does so in enormous tomes of labyrinthine prose, he simply overwhelms his audience. Just as Ulysses sits 80 per cent unread on thousands of bookshelves, so Adam Curtis’s documentaries sit 80 per cent unwatched on thousands of Sky+ boxes.

Curtis deserves praise primarily for doing something that no one else does. At a time when it so often seems that every programme on TV is being made to look like every other programme on TV, Adam Curtis creates series that could only have been created by Adam Curtis. That, in itself, warrants celebration. That those series stretch the frontiers of television documentary-making, and showcase complex intellectual arguments on a major channel in timeslots often used to broadcast asinine quiz shows and painfully derivative reality TV, should also always earn him acclaim.

His failings, though, should be frequently highlighted. His maddening assumption that his theories are correct simply because they are his theories, and that they should be believed simply because he conveys them in stylish and unusual ways, deserves to be mercilessly skewered. And so it is heartening to see it given a merciless skewering in The Loving Trap of Pandora’s Nightmares, a three-minute spoof recently uploaded to YouTube.

The internet is awash with homemade parodies. Few of them are worth watching and even fewer have any of the precision or wit of this one. It is tremendously funny and brilliantly observed, and – unlike much of the work of Adam Curtis – it manages to communicate its key ideas simply and in seconds. As such, it deserves to become the thinking web-surfer’s favourite viral video.

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