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Popetown This review first appeared in Third Way, October 2005.
This is a show which - and I’m sure you’ll spot the irony - we would probably never be reviewing if it hadn’t been censored. Because the first thing you need to know about it is that it is complete and utter rubbish. It sounds appealing. A cartoon starring the Pope (in the dramatis personnae, not the cast), supposed to launch BBC3 but then banned after a flood of complaints. And the cast includes Bob Mortimer (Reeves and Mortimer), Matt Lucas (Little Britain) and Ruby Wax as his holiness. But please save your money, even if it’s just to spend on booze and fags. The alarm bells start when you see the trailer, which in two minutes doesn’t contain a single word of dialogue. This is because, while it’s well enough animated and acted (there’s a likeable performance from Mortimer), and the basic story ideas have potential, there isn’t a single good joke in the series - or at least as far through the series as I could get. This is pretty fatal for a comedy, but not absolutely irredeemable. Some good characterisation can go a long way - but everyone here is two-dimensional at best. The Irish nun is thick as a brick and has no other personality at all. The cardinals are corrupt and materialistic and nothing else. The Pope himself, a spoilt child, has slightly more going for him, but not nearly enough. Alternatively, a bit of sharp and cutting satire about the church, something that criticises religion and calls Christians to task could be very well worth watching, with or without the laughs. But no. The assumption of the show is that the Catholic hierarchy cares about nothing but money, but this is the full extent of what it has to say. It’s cynical, it’s not satirical. It might sound odd to expect so much of a mere cartoon, but after 16 years of The Simpsons there is no excuse. That may offer an unfairly high standard for religious satire, but Popetown falls as far below it as Songs of Praise. So why give it an invaluable half-page? We at Third Way believe that a TV show (or whatever) does not have to be good to be worth talking about, and even garbage tells us something about our world. It makes for an interesting comparison with Jerry Springer: The opera, which the BBC refused to withdraw, despite almost three times as many complaints. Jerry Springer was musically brilliant, absolutely hilarious, pungent with satire - and vastly more offensive to Christians. The BBC’s calculation in each case - though the press releases phrased it slightly differently - was whether the degree to which the show would be appreciated by those who enjoyed it would balance the amount of trouble they would get in from lobbyists. Popetown wasn’t worth the bother, Jerry Springer was. This sum presents a conundrum for Christians too. Should artistic brilliance or comic genius redeem something whose values one finds hateful? Is blasphemy with flair less unpalatable? Is racism simply more dangerous when it’s hilarious? Another conundrum is how to respond. Whereas Christian Voice’s offensive offensive against Jerry Springer only served to boost its ratings, Popetown shows that the BBC are willing to bow to the religious lobby when its muscle:quality ratio is steep enough. But then how many extra DVDs will its “Banned from TV, damned by the church” label sell? And whatever the practicalities, there are moral issues of censorship. Should Christians really be using their collective muscle to try to silence anyone? The Catholic church in particular has a history of bookburning from Galileo to the Bible, and you would have thought that enough was enough. You could certainly argue that freedom of speech must be balanced against freedom of religion, which means the freedom to try and protect from abuse what you hold sacred. You could add that because of DVD Popetown has not been silenced, it has just been denied a portion of the national ‘shared space’ that is BBC TV (though BBC 3 is pushing it). But still demonstrating that you take yourself too seriously to accept mockery is no way to stop people making fun of you. |
the alarm bells start when you see the trailer, which in two minutes doesn’t contain a single word of dialogue |
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