Launching a new satire show in the UK is hard. You know that bit in Planet Earth II, where the baby iguana has to sprint across a desert plain as dozens of snakes chase it trying to eat it alive? Replace the baby iguana with a well-manicured comedian in a suit, replace the desert with a circular desk and replace the terrifying snakes with bigger terrifying snakes, and you’ll have some idea of the challenges.

This week, The Mash Report launches on BBC2. It features some of the brightest new comedic talent in the country, it’s hosted by two-time Edinburgh comedy award nominee Nish Kumar, and it features writers from the wildly successful online satirical paper the Daily Mash. Despite this, it’s almost guaranteed to suffer some form of backlash from the UK press: “THIS ISN’T THE DAILY SHOW! THIS MAN ISN’T JON STEWART!” The BBC will read those articles, panic and replace the rest of the series with a new talent show hosted by Mel Giedroyc called Pitch Battle Baking where contestants have to sing loudly into a cake.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘10 O’Clock Live with David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr and Lauren Laverne was cancelled after three series.’

In some ways, the problem British satire has is giving people what they want. For years, pundits have been crying out for a British version of The Daily Show, something that can mix monologues, news and sketches together and be both funny and informative. But every attempt has been met with disappointment – 10 O’Clock Live, the Channel 4 experiment with David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr and Lauren Laverne was cancelled after three series, while Unspun with Matt Forde on Dave hasn’t made waves.

The Daily Show has a very specific voice that took years to develop and grow. It’s like pointing a newborn British baby and saying “This is the British version of Robert de Niro”, and then being confused when your British version of Taxi Driver starring a crying baby in the lead role doesn’t instantly win an Oscar. Satire works best when both the programme makers and the audience know and trust the angle – Frankie Boyle’s New World Order works because it’s built around the persona that Boyle has built in the media for the past 15 years, while Newswipe with Charlie Brooker was based around his sarcasm and anger (any attempt to shoehorn him into an upbeat Daily Show-esque programme fails – see 10 O’Clock Live).

The most successful British satirical show of the past five years – The Last Leg – didn’t start out trying to be a satire, but rather as an extra bit of fun content for Channel 4 during the Paralympics. Slowly though, once the show had developed its distinctive angle, it was confident in becoming a satirical heavyweight (ie following Jeremy Hunt around with a type of giant tuba).

In fact, distinctive voices in satire matter more now than they ever have before, because news itself is getting faster – and so “stock” jokes are being made instantly. Following a big news story (as in Donald Trump firing James Comey, Theresa May losing her majority, Madonna falling off the stage at the Brits), dozens of comedians (professional or otherwise) are writing gags about it within seconds. Most of the time I find out about news based on the jokes people are making on Twitter and work backwards (With the Cameron piggate story I’m still not sure what happened – I think David rode around on a pig in the Houses of Parliament?).

There’s just no way TV can keep up with the sheer quantity of gags, gifs and memes spewing forth from the internet, which is why Have I Got News For You often resorts to just showing popular videos from the week or reshowing gags from Twitter. Writing new jokes on a Thursday for these shows can be like sifting through the Christmas Quality Street tin on 3 January – everyone’s already eaten all the green and purple ones, so you have to make do with the dregs (coconut, strawberry, those circular toffee ones that are really only good for putting in the pound-coin slot of a shopping trolley).

Of course, the other reason satire is so impossibly difficult right now is that we have entered the Age of Stupid Politics. We are living in a bad satirical sketch from five years ago. If you pitched any of the things that have happened – Trump becoming president, the Eurosceptics taking over the Conservatives, Labour electing Jeremy Corbyn as leader – in a writers’ meeting in 2010, the producer would say it was a bit much, and would ask you to maybe just focus on something more realistic like Nick Clegg becoming prime minister.

When good TV goes bad: how Have I Got News for You shot itself in the foot Read more

Politics has become angrier, violent, extreme, hateful – but our satire hasn’t quite caught up. I love the comedians on Mock The Week but it’s trapped in a format that made sense in 2010 – topical gags, evenly balanced between Labour and the Conservatives, that don’t really have a message beyond: “Ooh those politicians are all the same.” Comedy without a voice, snappy one-liners that don’t judge, all worked fine when political society behaved civilly, but in a world where social liberal values are being challenged and denigrated at every turn and where MPs are literally being killed for their beliefs, it doesn’t feel strong enough.

It’s why we need more authored, considered satire – satire that comes from conviction and beliefs, not from a misplaced sense of balance. The Mash Report can become that, but it needs time. In previous years I would have said launching it in late July was a genius move as it can find its voice in a relatively news-light period, but the way 2017 is going we could be at war with Brussels by August and all living in a nuclear bunker by the end of the eight-week run.

However it goes, know that British satire is not dead – it’s just morphing into something new to meet changing politics. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to sell the format of Pitch Battle Baking to the BBC before any of you sods steals it.