On a private jet, a well-groomed woman is tapping busily at her phone. When her colleagues start discussing the Zika virus, she snaps: “Mr Trump wants it to be called ‘Mexican flu’.” When a colleague protests, she murmurs, “A plague coming up from Latin America to real America …”
It may sound like the latest rhetoric from the real US presidential nominee, but thankfully this is a new comedy from the makers of Drop the Dead Donkey and Outnumbered. Power Monkeys is a satire with an ambitious plan to beat Twitter to the best jokes: a third of its scenes will be written, performed and cut on the day it goes out.
Starring Jack Dee, Archie Panjabi and Outnumbered’s Claire Skinner, the show takes on the EU referendum – skewering both sides of the campaign – and throws in Trump and Putin aides for good measure. Thanks to its same-day filming schedule, none of the twists, turns or comic potential of the 24-hour news cycle will be missed. It sounds like a massive challenge, not least for Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, who write, executive-produce and direct the show. But when we meet the week before the first episode is aired, they look remarkably relaxed, not to mention perfectly cast as comedy writers. Jenkin is tall, lanky and smiling, while Hamilton – a staple on Have I Got News for You – is shorter, rounder and more irascible.
The pair have been writing topical comedy together since the 70s. Last year, they created Ballot Monkeys, the predecessor of Power Monkeys, for Channel Four, with the same hectic schedule. Hamilton says there were no initial plans to repeat, but they couldn’t resist the brewing political climate: “It’s such an unusual period, and we thought it was ripe for a show that highlighted the absurdities.”
Power Monkeys takes place on the Brexit roadshow bus, and the fictional Conservative “Unity Unit” (where Jack Dee complains about the fervour of Brexiteers, saying that on the day of the vote “the tanning parlours and dogging lay-bys will be completely empty”). Like Ballot Monkeys before it, the show focuses on communication workers or advisers, people Hamilton calls the “oily rags” of the campaign, “the collateral damage in this huge psychodrama”.
But they have thrown the net wider, too – with Trump’s aides, including Ayda Field, last seen in Fresh Meat (or a viral video in which she is serenaded by her husband, Robbie Williams, as she gives birth, depending on your viewing habits), and Putin’s team adding extra global drama. Were Putin and Trump impossible to resist as comedy bait? “Trump is one of the great comic characters of all time,” says Hamilton. “Like watching an 11-year-old boy running for president. The way he has to win all the time, the way people have to let him. It’s like dealing with a child.”
While good TV satire like The Thick of It and Olympic-spoof Twenty Twelve can seem prescient (with terms such as “omnishambles” migrating from our screens into political commentary), Power Monkeys is banking on even quicker wits. On the Wednesday each episode is broadcast, Hamilton and Jenkin will meet at 7am and write until 10.30am. Their on-the-day scripts will be typed up, extra scenes filmed until 3pm, then edited into the pre-shot scenes until 8pm, and on our screens at 10pm. Hamilton and Jenkin are veterans of playing with the form of TV shows: in their family comedy Outnumbered, for instance, all the children’s dialogue was improvised. Still, it’s a risky enterprise.
“If there’s an assassination of a member of the royal family on a Wednesday morning, we will be in trouble …” muses Jenkin. “We’ll have to broadcast martial music,” agrees Hamilton.
In the week of the referendum, things will get tighter still, with episodes airing on the day before – and after – the vote. Have they filmed two versions? No time, they say. “We are hoping the count is efficient,” says Hamilton. “We will be stuffed if it is really close …” Jenkin admits.
It’s not hard to see the appeal of the nearly-live filming. On the day we meet, the pair are rubbing their hands at the news that North Korea’s state media has called Trump “wise” and “far-sighted”, and relishing the prospect of Trump arriving in the UK the day after the referendum (Jenkin thinks he’s “probably coming in the hope of being able to crow over the demise of David Cameron”).
Do they worry that politics has become so ludicrous it’s un-spoofable? On their Brexit roadshow bus set, fictional slogans like “No, Thank EU!” and “Shout OUT!” are less toe-curling than a recent, real “vote in” advert (sample line: “Workin, roamin, chillin, shoppin”). Hamilton doesn’t think this is a problem. “We aren’t under pressure to make anything more ridiculous because we aren’t spoofing it, we are using fictional characters to observe it. It’s trench humour – there’s not much else you can do but laugh.”
Nor do they feel hampered by broadcasting rules, which dictate the satire has to be even-handed. Both men decline to say which side they will vote for, but Hamilton says he understands why people might feel torn. “The judgment is kind of instinctive given there are no facts – or there might be some, but we are never going to hear about them.”
Both sides, he says, have “gone to the extremes of their position and abandoned facts so early on. Neither side is covering themselves with glory.” Jenkin hopes the show will act as a “pressure valve” for viewers fed up with the round-the-clock political news.
It was just this unorthodox approach that attracted Panjabi, fresh from crime drama Shetland, kissing Gillian Anderson in gritty drama The Fall, and winning an Emmy as the investigator Kalinda Sharma in The Good Wife.
Panjabi is open about the fact that in the UK she was not being given the chance to play the roles she wanted. “I struggled a bit because when I saw a script here I always wanted the bigger or juicier rules. But when I was a bit younger – maybe 10 years ago – you wouldn’t see women of colour holding those roles.”
Now that she is being offered them, why play a supporting role in a British comedy? It’s an unexpected choice for someone who has become a byword for playing tough, sexy characters.
“I thought I would throw myself in the deep end,” Panjabi explains. “When you do a lot of acting you sometimes lose the novelty, but doing comedy is unfamiliar territory – like being the new kid at school.” There was another bonus, she adds, laughing. “There’s no sex in this! Which seems to be a niche from the work I have done.”
Considering the tight schedule, everything has been surprisingly calm so far, she says. “On other shows, you can be given new lines the night before filming, and things change, but you’re not ready for it. With this, at least you know.” She finds it exciting to “learn the new lines and go on set, then go home and watch the programme you have just made”.
Now living in LA, Panjabi won’t be returning to the third series of The Fall, she says, because of filming clashes, but couldn’t resist playing the part of Preeya, an unscrupulous Conservative politician who flits between both camps. “She is very ambitious – she probably thinks she could be the first ever female British Indian prime minister.”
Asked if she is based on Priti Patel, who has been all over the papers this week, she laughs then denies it. (Hamilton, too insists, there is no link: “Preeya wishes she was Priti Patel!”)
Panjabi is enthusiastic about her co-stars Dee and Skinner, saying working with them “means there is such a high standard to achieve that it keeps my creative juices flowing”. But she is also well aware of the possibility of mishaps on Power Monkeys. “It’s TV, at the end of the day – if anything goes wrong, it’s only entertainment,” she says, then quickly adds: “I try to look at it from that angle, because if I don’t, I’m terrified!”
Hamilton and Jenkin are equally keen to downplay the dangers. “We’re not exactly adrenaline junkies,” laughs Jenkin. “It’s not the equivalent of throwing ourselves off a cliff with a parachute.” Hamilton can’t help but cut in, “We would like a parachute …”
Power Monkeys airs every Wednesday on Channel 4 at 10pm from 8 June, with an extra episode after the EU referendum at 10pm on Friday 24 June.
