Tory-approved sitcoms? You’re having a laugh!

In a week of more important news, it was easy to miss the tragic end of BBC comedy The Mash Report, the first casualty of the concerted Conservative campaign against what the party’s MPs call the Beeb’s “lefty bias”.

On this, they had a teensy point. On the day the cancellation was announced, its presenter Nish Kumar tweeted that the prime minister was “a liar and a racist”, which does suggest a fractional divergence from impartiality.

Even so, after all the complaints about freedom of speech and cancel culture, it was striking to see the rejoicing in conservative circles. But then, on this side of the culture wars, revenge is a Nish best served cold.

But the thought now occurs that there is a serious business opportunity here, producing Tory-approved comedies for the BBC. These BBC execs are desperate now, an easy target.

Even so, this is not 1970. Balance cannot just be bringing back the show but with Jim Davidson as the presenter. So my new company, QuidsIn Productions, is working on some ideas.

We are very excited about The Remainiacs, a sitcom about a family that spends their whole time blaming Brexit for every problem in their life. By mocking liberal remainers, this comedy reflects the broader society outside of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds, Scotland and all those other unrepresentative parts of the UK. We are still working on the catchphrase but it might be “You can put that on the side of a bus”.

The Remainiacs, obviously, are stuck-up, archetypal metropolitan elitists always complaining about the queues at the Waitrose sushi counter or how “there’s a lot of langoustine curry on discount again”. Each week, one of them loses out in a family dispute and spends the rest of the show demanding a confirmatory vote.

There is a serious business opportunity here, producing Tory-approved comedies for the BBC. These BBC execs are desperate, an easy target

BBC execs are very excited about Yes, Yes, Prime Minister, a comedy about a chaotic but charismatic prime minister, Horace Ronson, who is loved by the nation but who cannot find two socks that match and whose personal life is a source of constant chaos. Each episode sees him saving the country from some crisis generated by the liberal media, the liberal civil service or the liberal elite, even as he struggles to prevent his numerous girlfriends from finding out about each other. Viewers love his catchphrase “excrementum ist icturum fan”, but he always confounds his enemies by being more in tune with ordinary people. A running gag is that every week the Downing Street press officer acquires a new press aide who looks suspiciously like a younger version of himself. One of the big jokes is that Horace has a pet dog he pretends to hate but which in fact is his chief political strategist.

Blue Wall is a comedy about a go-getting Tory mayor in a northern region who buys an airport just before the pandemic hits and spends the rest of his term trying to persuade the government to fill it with civil service jobs that are moving north. Each week our loveable mayor finds new ways to put one over the posho, out-of-touch southern liberal elite, so that by the end of series one, over 20,000 civil servants have been relocated to the baggage hall.

Jabs is set on the Irish border and follows a Northern Irish family smuggling Covid-19 vaccines into the Republic, which is unable to get out of lockdown because of the incompetence of the EU. The villain is an EU commissioner who is constantly trying to stop the Irish getting out of lockdown in the name of European solidarity.

We have others in the pipeline including Hearts of Woke, a comedy mocking the politically correct; Dacre’s Wild, the hilarious story of a heroic, down-to-earth reactionary tabloid newspaper editor and ferocious opponent of press regulation who gets made the new broadcasting regulator; and Judge John Deed, an absurdist fantasy about a ludicrously liberal judge and enemy of the people, who goes to bizarre lengths to frustrate the elected government.

Anyway, as I said to the new DG: “You may not love them but they are worth the licence fee alone.”

Follow Robert on Twitter @robertshrimsley and email him at robert.shrimsley@ft.com

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