Newzoids press clippings - Page 2 - British Comedy Guide

TV sketch show
ITV1
2015 - 2016
12 episodes (2 series)

Topical satirical sketch show featuring puppets. Stars Jon Culshaw, Debra Stephenson, Lewis Macleod, Simon Greenall, Jon Clegg and more.

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Press clippings Page 2

Newzoids: more new puppets make their debuts

New characters appearing include Simon Cowell, Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne.

Danny Walker, The Mirror, 22nd April 2015

9 things Newzoids made us hope like hell never happen

A show of famous faces made into puppets is harmless right? A few wise-crack jokes here and there, a bit of banter. Just a general giggle, surely. Nope. Newzoids has made us entirely uncomfortable in suggesting things we hope never ever happen.

Katie Baillie, Metro, 22nd April 2015

Newzoids is, of course, a curate's egg. As was Spitting Image when it started, so put away those rosy rear-view spectacles. The CGI'd mouths are at the start disconcerting, but the obvious puppetry of the... arm-Zimmers?... reassuring, and the voices, from Jon Culshaw and Debra Stephenson, terrific. Things to love: Mrs Crown's Boys, which sees Queenie as a foul-mouthed matriarch; Chas and Camilla reimagined as the "posh" Gogglebox pair; the ghastlily "common" Prince George. In fact anything that rips the jack out of royalty and deference, and any sketch involving Jeremy Clarkson or Russell Brand, just because their time has belatedly come for a fine and decent kicking.

Things to hate: the cliches. Andy Murray has a boring voice. Dave Cameron is posh. The writers need to sharpen the political satire, but I'm lost for precisely how: it was either a masterstroke to launch this in an election runup or a catastrophic idea to think one could out-imagine politicians' own gift for self-parody. And we more than ever need the oinks of "Her Majesty's press". Give it time. We gave Spitting Image 18 series.

Euan, The Observer, 19th April 2015

As is always the way with sketch shows like Newzoids there were some hits and misses but on the whole there were more of the former than the latter. The highlights of episode one were North Korean light entertainment vehicle 'The Un Show' and a very funny sketch involving Andy Murray's wedding night. One thing I appreciated about Newzoids was the fact that it was written quite close to transmission so that the majority of the skits felt topical. At the same time this sometimes felt like more than hindrance than a help with the writing team picking a story then trying to work a joke around it. A prime example of this was the use of Nigel Farage's controversial comments at the leaders' debate which the writers turned into a stand-up comedy routine. This felt like an incredibly ill-judged sketch that wasn't as cutting edge as the writers thought it would be and instead it just felt a bit crass. I don't think Newzoids will have the same impact as Spitting Image partly because of the fact that it's going out at 9pm on Wednesday night. Whilst Spitting Image had somewhat of a cult appeal, Newzoids appears to be going for a more mainstream audience which is exemplified by the focus on the Jeremy Clarkson firing from a couple of weeks' ago. The attacks on the three main party leaders also felt a little tame with Ed Milliband's failure to eat a bacon sandwich and Nick Clegg's claims of abuse being two more examples of weak sketches. But I'm going to give Newzoids the benefit of the doubt for now as it must be hard to write a show of this nature and there were some sketches that gave me hope that Newzoids could at least turn into something that would be worth checking out on a weekly basis.

Matt, The Custard TV, 18th April 2015

Can any ITV satire exorcise the Spitting Image spectre?

It has the potential to be a great show, I only hope in today's cut-throat business it is given the chance to learn from its mistakes.

Marc Paterson, The Huffington Post, 17th April 2015

Newzoids: no Spitting Image but step in right direction

ITV's satirical puppetry show lacks the heart and bite of its prestigious predecessor, but at least manages the feat of feeling fresh.

Stuart Heritage, The Guardian, 16th April 2015

Who says satire is dead? After this, I would imagine just about everybody.

According to Jon Culshaw, one of the prime movers in ITV's new puppet-CGI farrago Newzoids

, this isn't just Spitting Image revisited because "the puppets have got more of a spikiness, more of an edgy exaggeration to them." You think? One other difference he forgot to mention was that Spitting Image was often really rather good.

Where did it all go wrong? Of course, Spitting Image profited hugely from being the product of the Thatcher era, when the political battle lines were starkly drawn and the whiff of anarchy and grapeshot was in the air. Now we've entered an insipid (yet disturbing) era in which politicians posture, bluster and say anything that might nudge the all-powerful opinion polls half a percentage point in their direction. Conviction is dead, and everybody has fired off their personal opinions all over Twitter before the Newzoid scriptwriters have managed to pull the caps off their biros. And besides, doesn't the EU make all the big decisions for us anyway?

Take out the ads and Newzoids only last about 23 minutes, but even so it could hardly drag itself to the finishing tape. The team had laboured hard to draw up a checklist of likely targets, but then couldn't think of anything satirical to say about them. Ed Miliband appeared as a gormless geek with Ant and Dec (or perhaps it was vice versa). A barely-recognisable David Cameron was carried around like Nero in a sedan chair, talking like Ken Clarke impersonating the Duke of Kent. And why have him saying "get me to a hospital, a private one obvs" when his use of the NHS is well documented?

There was a sketch called "Mrs Crown's Boys", in which the Queen and Prince Philip kept saying "feck", and we had a pantomimic Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond singing "sod the English". It looked as if there might be a daring moment coming up when we saw a Muslim couple worrying about their son joining Isis, but it stopped before anything controversial happened. Nigel Farage was depicted as a stand-up comic with a fag and a pint of beer. Then Gary Barlow sang a song about not paying tax. It was like Anti-Pointless, where you had to find the laziest, most obvious answers that everyone else had already thought of.

Adam Sweeting, The Arts Desk, 16th April 2015

The Thunderbirds reboot may have opted for CGI but this new satirical sketch show goes full retro, featuring crude Action Man versions of Prince Charles, Beyoncé, Andy Murray and other notable cultural figures. The cheerful crappiness of the puppets - particularly noticeable since Putin always has his top off - feels like a throwback to the grotesquery of Spitting Image, but Newzoids will ultimately depend on the quality of the writing. A crack voice squad, including Jon Culshaw and Debra Stephenson, certainly helps.

Graeme Virtue, The Guardian, 15th April 2015