A satirical sketch show looking at the current news events is nothing new but Michael Spicer does it better than most.
Spicer is already an internet sensation with his ‘In the Room Next Door’ videos, where he plays a frustrated adviser who is communicating live via an earpiece with a figure speaking in public. The videos cut between Spicer getting more and more frustrated and real footage of the public figure speaking at an event.
His online videos have amassed 100 million views and now he is moving from YouTube to the crowded world of podcasts with his latest offering ‘No Room’. He also created acclaimed Radio 4 sitcom, Michael Spicer: Before Next Door, a fictionalised telling of his rise to fame.
The first couple of episodes dropped last week and it will be a ten-part series in all, bring Spicer’s character-led satire to listeners. Two episodes will appear weekly, followed by a Radio 4 broadcast later this spring.
The episodes are a punchy 15 minutes or so and are rather cutting and really rather funny.
The first sketch takes a dig at the global obsession with Taylor Swift as a war correspondent chats to a music journalist about her latest album while in the midst of a war zone and is being shot at.
There is a thinly veiled dig at Ridley Scott after his film Napoléon proved something of a flop and a bunch of old white blokes all called Tim ‘fixing racism’.
In the second episode Louis Theroux gets a pasting in an amusing sketch whereby he meets a man who had murder conviction overturned and gets angry by his interview technique. A bumbling out-of-touch minister also joins a local candidate on his campaign trail and clearly knows nothing about him or the area.
The podcast is slick and fast paced with slightly haunting incidental music between each sketch, akin to the Chris Morris sketch shows of the 1990s. The comedy can often be scathing but there is nothing ranty and the sketches are more nuanced.
Some segments are just a few seconds long while other longer sketches are revisited throughout the podcast, ensuring the format does not become too formulaic.
Spicer told the BBC: ‘I would like to thank BBC Radio 4 for continuing my fever dream and giving me my own sketch show, something I’ve wanted since I was 10. I’ve been writing and performing my own sketches on social media for nearly twenty years so you could say I’m a pioneer.
‘No Room is a show that brings my life on social media to BBC Sounds and Radio 4, so if you’ve ever enjoyed and shared my sketches online, you’ll enjoy this new show. And if you have ever shared my sketches online, thanks very much, it changed my life.’
No Room is available now on BBC Sounds with two episodes available and others released twice weekly.