At some point in the early 21st century, comedy stopped being funny. Politics became the biggest joke on earth, thanks to Trump, Corbyn, Trudeau, Rees-Mogg et al. The professional humourists couldn’t keep up. They turned worthy or bitter or both.
Satirical TV news shows, like Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You, ceased to entertain. Famous comedians became Twitter bores. Intelligent stand-ups became pretentious whiners. Satirists on the fringes, meanwhile, became angry and serious.
The actor and comedian Tom Walker is seriously angry. His creation, Jonathan Pie, is a TV news reporter who hates his job and life, and it’s an online hit. The sketches involve Walker, playing Pie, foaming at an imaginary producer in his earpiece. He shouts down the camera about the terribleness of the media, the idiocy of most pundit opinion, the utter horror of modern politics – then goes back to into reporter mode as if all were well.
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