The critics have cast their verdicts on the controversial new comedy series from Sacha Baron Cohen.
Having been announced less than a week ago, Who Is America? was unveiled by the comedian - a surprise TV show in which he has pulled the wool over the eyes of some of the country's most notorious politicians, many of whom have since fired criticism his way.
According to the synopsis, the show “will explore the diverse individuals, from the infamous to the unknown across the political and cultural spectrum, who populate our unique nation.“ These figures include Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney and Joe Walsh who has led a social media campaign to boycott US network Showtime for airing the series.
Critics have now seen the first episode of the series from the Ali G and Borat actor, and you can read their verdicts below.
What a pleasant surprise, then, that “Who Is America?” feels both as richly comic as anything Baron Cohen has done in the decade-plus since “Borat” and urgently resonant with our own era. The show’s format—using four new Baron Cohen personae in order to expose the nature of contemporary American culture—is particularly effective, moving as it does beyond the boldface names who’ve come forward to say they’ve been pranked by the comic.
Shame was the secret ingredient in Da Ali G Show, the obstacle that had to be circumvented to make us believe that the effort Cohen put into devising characters, picking his targets and insinuating himself into their lives on-camera was worth the trouble. Shame is the missing ingredient in Cohen's Who Is America? and, unfortunately, it's not an ingredient that proves merely incidental. It's the difference between shocking and not shocking, between hilarious and simply fleetingly funny.
If only it were funnier. There’s plenty of laughs in the episode, but Baron Cohen has a habit of pursuing particular rabbit holes for far too long... Not weak, however, is Baron Cohen the performer, who’s clearly put some real time into these characters. His various accents, American and otherwise, are shockingly confident...
The joke hasn’t changed, but in the years since Cohen last played this sort of game, the American political climate has grown nastier and more partisan... What part could a Cohen character hope to play when White House spokespersons and Cabinet secretaries are getting hounded out of restaurants? Our world has become as absurd as anything Cohen could conceive... [He] is still an undisputed genius at punking a variety of targets, from the ultra-gullible to seemingly savvy.
Who Is America? will air tonight in the US with its UK premiere arriving tomorrow (16 July) on Channel 4
