Political comedy television sketches from the 1970s and 1980s in the U.K and the U.S

[Benjamin Frank]

If this is allowed here, I'd like to post occasional videos from this earlier time.  It gets back to some of the arguments before the context might have been lost.

These are three of my favorites.

From the British sketch show 'Not the 9 O'Clock News'

Lord Peter Carrington was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's first Foreign Secretary. He is the last Lord to have held one of the U.K 'Great Offices of State.'  He seemed to be a very competent if occasionally controversial person, but had to resign after failing to foresee the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands.

I'm not sure why the video shows him unable to say certain words, but it was probably related to the Falkland Islands thing.

'The Liberal M.P for Lands End South, Rudolph Bead' seems to be a fictional person.

Frances Morrell was an elected Labour Party Education Authority Trustee, who these days would likely be called 'woke.'

Clive Jenkins was a well liked witty trade union official.

[Benjamin Frank]

American T.V Show Fridays (an early 1980s alternative to Saturday Night Live) imagining the election of Ronald Reagan as the Ronnie Horror Picture Show.

A lengthy sketch that for an American sketch comedy is surprisingly sophisticated.

[Benjamin Frank]

From Not The Nine O'Clock News. To say anything about it would spoil it.
(I can fill in details after people have seen it - if anybody wants to.)

[Benjamin Frank]

President Jimmy Carter held a radio call in show with Walter Cronkite on March 5 1977 and, for a while after being elected President, he had an enormous honeymoon with the voters.

This original cast SNL sketch paints President Carter as a near superhero with an expertise in virtually everything.  It's a funny sketch, but I'm sure it helped raised expectations on Carter that then contributed to his fall.

In my opinion though, the best political sketch ever on Saturday Night Live was the one with Jesse Jackson hosting a game show called 'The Question is Moot.' Unfortunately, I can't find it on Youtube.  Jesse Jackson as a minister was obviously used to public speaking but he would have made a great comedic actor.

[Benjamin Frank]

There has been a good deal written of how Chevy Chase if not much of the original cast hated Gerald Ford for pardoning Nixon.  Much of the original SNL cast got their start working on the National Lampoon comedy hour on radio where they skewered the Nixon presidency during the Watergate years.

Not being raised a Christian myself, I didn't understand the 'trim the tree' joke for a long time.

[Benjamin Frank]

I think it needs to be pointed out here though, that during the 1976 election SNL also lampooned Jimmy Carter. While Chevy Chase if not much of the cast hated Gerald Ford, they were not biased in favor of Jimmy Carter.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

annoyingly, when ITV revived Spitting Image, they decided to copyright strike almost every single old clip on YT, and haven't bothered uploading any since.

[Perlen vor den Schweinen]

annoyingly, when ITV revived Spitting Image, they decided to copyright strike almost every single old clip on YT, and haven't bothered uploading any since.

I always want to post the "I've Never Met a Nice South African" clip in response to about anything Elon Musk does..... but I can't ;_;

[If my soul was made of stone]

every line of this was a running joke with my high school friends

[Benjamin Frank]

Memories fade and charlatans come in and lie to people about 'the good ol' days.' I dislike extremists on all sides, so this sketch from the Canadian comedy show 'SCTV' is a good primer on what life in the Soviet Union was really like.  (SCTV stood for Second City Television. the original SCTV originated in Chicago which billed itself as 'America's second city' (after New York City.)

The opening few seconds of the video are like that because it's based on the premise that a Soviet television station named CCCP1 has taken over the broadcast signal of SCTV.  SCTV did a number of sketches using this, but I like this game show one especially.

[Benjamin Frank]

The rise in violent youth crime, or at least, reporting on violent youth crime reminded me of this sketch from Not the Nine O'Clock News