Sacha Baron Cohen

'Da Ali G Show' unseen episodes to air in US

Sacha Baron Cohen's Da Ali G Show is to air in the US. Previously unaired episodes of the comedy show will be broadcast on FXX in 2014.

Could anyone have foreseen just how great a comedy Borat - or to give it its full title, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan - was going to be? Its star, Sacha Baron Cohen, had honed the satirical stunt documentary to perfection in his Ali G TV series, but had crashed and burned when trying to put the character on the big screen, in the awful Ali G Indahouse. It's still a bit of a mystery why Baron Cohen ever got the chance to make a follow-up, but he wisely went back to the format that had proved itself time and again on TV: set up an apparently clueless fictional character, and send him in to encounter real-life types and get them to make idiots of themselves. Borat, the cheerfully antisemitic TV presenter from Kazakhstan, who had populated Baron Cohen's TV spots since the late 90s, may not have appeared promising material for a feature, but boy, was everyone wrong.

The film is based on a simple idea: Borat is making a documentary about the US. But the opening section, in which he introduces his home village and its inhabitants, establishes a tone of breathtaking offensiveness. The "Kazakh" actors clearly have no idea about the outrageous things Borat is saying about them, and Baron Cohen crowns proceedings by staging a "running of the Jew", supposedly a regular local pastime. Thus the stage is set: the film is an incredibly cruel satire, aimed at both post-Soviet bigotry and American social dysfunction.

By the time he gets to the US, Baron Cohen is in full flow, the superficial ingenuousness of his creation opening all sorts of doors. Arguably the most spectacular, and certainly unplanned, result is the consternation he causes by bravely singing a spoof national anthem at a rodeo in Texas; the electric hostility he triggers in the spectators unnerves one of the horses so much it stumbles and falls to the ground.

Baron Cohen, as has been pointed out, can be faulted perhaps for bamboozling the uncomprehending and the weak. But that misses the point of much of what makes Borat great: the joke is almost always on him as well. The sort of comedy that Baron Cohen is trying for is high-risk for sure, and hardly guaranteed to provide results - but Borat is all gold. We may never see its like again.

Queen: Sacha Baron Cohen was too funny to play Mercury

Rockers Queen decided against Sacha Baron Cohen playing their late bandmate Freddie Mercury on the big screen over fears the Brit was too funny for the part.

Back when he could still get away with hiding behind a large moustache, a Golden Globe winning Sacha Baron Cohen took various dim, unsuspecting Americans for a ride with this controversial mockumentary.

Posing as journalist Borat Sagdiyev, a racist, anti-Semitic simpleton from Kazakhstan, the London comic actor here goes to the US on a simple quest to find and marry Pamela Anderson.

Oscar-nominated for its screenplay, it was banned in all Arab countries except Lebanon and was initially denounced by the Kazakh government, who then embraced it when it was shown to have caused a surge in tourist interest.

BAFTA L.A. to honour Sacha Baron Cohen

Sacha Baron Cohen is this year's recipient of the Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for excellence in comedy. The actor-writer-producer will receive the honor Nov. 9 at the 2013 BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Awards.

A pilot developed into a four-part series in 2012, I'm Spazticus received mixed reviews, but C4 has had faith enough to try again this year. It's frustrating to report that little has improved. Deriving its title from an ancient, taboo-pushing Ian Dury song (Spasticus Autisticus) is symptomatic of the problem - it's woefully old-fashioned from start to finish.

The all-disabled cast do their best, but there's only so far one can go when a sketch involves pretending to be Hitler. When Freddie Starr isn't being channelled, Brass Eye is, with a carbon-copy of the famed 'Carla the elephant' skit involving a charity committed to stopping monkey arms being used instead of expensive prosthetic arms. Trouble is, whereas Chris Morris had the panache to make Martin Amis look like a tit, I'm Spazticus can only cajole plankton from TOWIE or Big Brother to make themselves look foolish. This raises precisely no laughs, simply because nobody expects reality rejects to be anything but dimwitted to begin with.

Amid the Jackass-lite buffoonery, one skit shines - an estate agent turning up to give an estimate on a wendy house. Otherwise, there's little to threaten the holy trinity of pranksters - Steve Allen, Sacha Baron Cohen and St Noel of Crinkley Bottom.

Meet the Female Borat - Mona Yousefi

Sacha Baron Cohen, here's your XX match. Meet the British comedian poised to take the cringe-comedy throne with her show, Going Native.

Sacha Baron Cohen pulls out of Freddie Mercury biopic

Sacha Baron Cohen has pulled out of a Freddie Mercury biopic over "creative differences", according to reports.

Interview with Ali G and Borat writer Dan Mazer

In his myriad years as a comedy writer, Dan Mazer has worked under as many mediums as his writing partner Sacha Baron Cohen has worked with stick-on hair.