The press-release accompanying the BBC’s Tonight with Vladimir Putin may have lashed on the hype, promising a CGI comedy talk show with “everybody’s favourite bear-wrestling global strongman”, but the show’s most obvious customer – the Kremlin – has reacted with disinterest.
Responding to Wednesday’s reports that Britain’s public broadcaster had commissioned two pilot episodes of a virtual-reality Putin talk-show, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian leader had “no plans” to watch it.
“Many books have been written about Putin, and there have been puppets and caricatures too. The president has not read books about himself, and has not watched the cartoons either,” he said. “Putin doesn’t want to imitate the caricatures; let the caricatures imitate him.”
Russia itself does not have any real political satire show on mainstream TV. The acerbic Kukly (”Puppets”), based on Britain’s Spitting Image, was taken off air in 2002, shortly after Mr Putin came to power.
From the small trailer published by the BBC’s press department on Wednesday, Tonight with Vladimir Putin does not look to be immediately hostile to the Russian president.
The lines uttered by the 3D digital image of Putin – “When I was young KGB officer in the late 1980s, I was the only person who saw the hidden delights the west: blue jeans, rock’n’roll and Terry Wogan” – are not obviously insulting (or indeed funny).
But the cheap tone of the production and several obvious errors left some in Russia wondering whether both Britain and the BBC had collectively lost their minds on the back of Brexit.
The date for the show’s release has yet to be published.
But producers promise a line-up of guests including Tony Blair’s former spokesman Alistair Cambell and comedian Deborah Frances-White.
The show would also come to herald the “ultimate victory for Vlad, leader of the free world”, the BBC said.
As the more informed were quick to point out, “Vlad” is the short form of Vladislav, not Vladimir. A more accurate short form of the president’s name would be “Vova.”
