Cancel Culture: The Decline of Political Comedy on British Television in the Early 2020s

The early 2020s saw a string of cancellations of British political comedy programmes: Mock the Week, a topical panel show; The Mash Report, a news parody; Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, a comic debate; and Spitting Image, a short-lived reboot of the much-loved 1980s / 1990s puppet caricature sketch series. This appeared to be the culmination of a long-standing prediction of the ‘death of satire’ given its apparent superfluity in an extreme, sometimes absurd political culture. Taking the cancellations of the above programmes as a case study, the article examines three intersecting causes for the decline in UK political comedy. First, it will examine the context of the UK ‘culture wars’, with its inherent paradox in which ‘wokeness’ is figured as humourless and therefore antithetical to comedy yet satire, critical of the conservative mainstream, is itself too ‘woke’. Second, it will consider the political interference with British broadcasters from right wing campaigners and governments, and its impact on political comedy. Third, it evaluates industrial change in the television sector, and the shifting value of satire as content for an increasingly competitive media ecosystem.