There have been so many parodies since that it is strange to go back to the real thing. And even stranger to find that the parodies never got out of the starting blocks. Where, after all, can you go when the original Jerry Springer Show showcased Diaper Bob, aired the Stripper Wars episode, ran stories such as “I cut off my manhood”, “My wife’s sleeping with my aunt” or “I’m pregnant by my brother” and – perhaps most famously – brought on Mark and his horse wife Pixel (together for 10 years, married for five – he left his human family for her) to the most delighted gasps yet from Springer’s enthusiastically appalled audience.
Such are the highlights – if that word can be used for a show that was blamed for ushering in a new era of cultural degradation – around which the documentary about the most notorious talkshow in television history is built. Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action assembles key players from the time, focusing mainly on its 90s heyday (the show ran, slightly startlingly, until 2018) when it was revolutionised by “diabolical genius” Richard Dominick. He felt himself bound only by law when it came to deciding what could be screened. “If I could execute someone on TV,” he says, “I would.”
