If BBC2 thought it had a lot of complaints about Top Gear, it should wait for its new Armando Iannucci satire Time Trumpet, which features 9/11-style video footage of an airliner hijacked by al-Qaeda crashing into the Houses of Parliament.
The eerily realistic "news" clip is one of the nominations for the programme's "Terrorism Awards", along with a Hamas attack on Tel Aviv - presumably put together before recent events - and Tony Blair being "shot dead as he slept beside his wife".
One person's cutting edge satire is another's unacceptable television, of course, and the al-Qaeda clip - watch it here - is only one skit in a six-part series.
Many of the clips on the programme's preview site are laugh out loud funny - a mouse crawling out of Anna Ford's throat as she sombrely reads the One O'Clock News, Dale Winton exploding, and the home shopping channel that sells nothing but bacon - but viewers of a sensitive disposition would be advised to watch ITV1's Love Island instead.
"The clips have to be seen in the context of the whole series," said a BBC spokeswoman. The show begins on BBC2 this Thursday, with the terrorism episode scheduled for week three. "It is a satire. The scenarios are so ludicrous that anyone who complained would be making a fool of themselves."
The programme, discussed by Iannucci in an interview in the Independent, also raises questions about the role of BBC News presenters.
It's all very well Natasha Kaplinsky appearing on Strictly Come Dancing, but what about Jeremy Bowen, as he does in Time Trumpet, appearing to present a news report in which protestors at the cartoons of Mohammed hold placards saying "Hunt down the sarcastic townies and gag them like badgers" and "Jews glistening malignant polips"?
It's very funny - or not, depending on your point of view - but what happens when Bowen crops up on Newsnight five minutes later reporting on more deaths in Israel and Lebanon? Presumably all the reporters were consulted before they appeared in the programme, and were given permission to do so by BBC News management. I can't help but feel they might come to regret it.
