It is a strange truth that to satirise something effectively, you have to love it – at least a little. You have to see it in the round and understand not just where it fails but where it succeeds, and why some people like it while others loathe it. Good satire doesn’t come from indifference: it comes from disappointment, rage and the desire to show not just how things fail but how they could be better.
Jonathan Swift wrote about people eating babies because he was furious. Jane Austen looked at Georgian women’s lot and laid bare all its miseries through laughter. Leaping over a few centuries, the likes of Yes, Minister, Yes, Prime Minister and Spitting Image skewered politicians, civil servants and cultural figures because they thought life could be less of a nightmare. The Thick of It, Veep and Succession carry on that grand tradition.
