The Metropolis

The strange death of...TV impressionists

Mike Pollitt | Monday 7 March, 2011 11:20

The world is changing fast. This occasional series chronicles some runners whom the race outran

Alistair McGowan turned up on TV over the weekend on the BBC’s Final Score Comic Relief special. It was a curious outing, and made me wonder whether British television has moved into a post-Impressionist age. Spitting Image, McGowan, Ancona, Culshaw, Bremner – the mimicking voices who used to rule the roost are now silent. Have they expired for good? Are they now, indeed, ex-parrots?

The reason for this pondering was that, though no fault of his own, McGowan’s outing was such a depressing watch. The man’s talent for mimicry is unquestionable, but watching him autopilot through decade-old impressions of Alan Hansen and Sven Goran Eriksson sank the heart. Sounding the same as someone else is uncanny, it’s not automatically amusing – unless you’re a 12-year-old boy or Garth Crooks. You applaud the artifice, but you’re unmoved by the art.

In the glory days of impressionists, the verisimilitude was secondary to the satire. Spitting Image and Rory Bremner tore the Tories a new one. McGowan at his best, along with the underrated 2DTV, held a mirror to celebrity excesses so revolting that the mirror cracked in disgust.

And now? There’s stuff to mock, there always will be. But the professionalisation of politics and celebrity have blended the targets into an unappetising mush. Could McGowan do a good impression of Cameron, Clegg and the Milibands? He does pretty decent ones just by speaking in his own voice. In the land of the bland, the one toned man is king.

Perhaps this is cyclical. Perhaps the impressionists are only sleeping, waiting for Prime Minister Boris to complete his ascent to power. But it’s telling that the only recent show to make impressions impressive was The Trip, in which multi-talented Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon dicked around with other people’s voices without ever losing their own. Perhaps pure impressions are going the way of vaudeville and mother-in-law gags, to the end of the pier where they can still raise a smile without threatening the TV schedules. For McGowan, a talented Shakespearean actor, this may not be unwelcome. Why mimic Hansen when you can create your own Hamlet?

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