Note: there are mild spoilers in this piece News just in at Waystar Royco: the stakes have been raised among the warring Roys as Succession returns for its final series. The highly anticipated fourth season of HBO’s hugely popular drama opened with a sombre episode. Creator Jesse Armstrong has confirmed that season four is the last, setting up much speculation about the details of the denouement. Tonally, the story of the Roy family and the media conglomerate they control, is a cross between Greek tragedy and political satire. This kind of dramatic counterpoint is an integral feature of the st ..read more

Satire can be dangerous. DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images Can Americans be jailed for making fun of the government? Most would respond with a resounding “No, of course not! The First Amendment protects us from that.” But Anthony Novak learned otherwise in March 2016, after he created and posted a fake version of the Parma, Ohio, Police Department’s Facebook page. He copied the department’s name and profile picture onto his satirical Facebook page, but unlike the official page, Novak’s was designated a “Community” page and displayed the slogan: “We no crime,” a parody of the department’s actu ..read more

Shutterstock If you’ve read, watched and enjoyed the work of America’s best-known satirical publication The Onion, you might be surprised by how serious it suddenly became earlier this month. So serious, in fact, that it might end up before the US Supreme Court. Each year approximately 7,000 appellants petition to have their cases heard before the Supreme Court, but only 100 to 150 of these petitions are reviewed. What are known as amicus curiae briefs can be filed by interested third parties to strengthen the need for a petition to be seen by the court. Little wonder, then, that it caught th ..read more

Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy Africa’s most famous funnyman and TV star, the South African stand-up comedian and author Trevor Noah, is leaving his job as the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show in the US. Noah, who hosted the high profile show for seven years, says he wants to devote more time to his stand-up career. We asked Allaina Kilby, a journalism, political communication and satire lecturer, how he will be remembered in the political satire landscape on TV in the US. What’s your view of Trevor Noah’s tenure at the show? Taking over from Jon Stewart was never ..read more

Screenshot/YouTube Changes to Australian defamation laws that came into effect this month in several states could provide some respite for political satire as a mode of political communication. In recent years, the defamation lawsuit risk for Australian comedians has been real. The treatment of YouTube personality Jordan Shanks and his producer Kristo Langker is a case in point. FriendlyJordies, Shanks’ popular YouTube channel, had mockingly depicted NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro as Mario, the fictional video game character who wins races by cheating. Shanks’ satirical stunts and commentar ..read more

Screenshot/YouTube New South Wales Deputy Premier John Barilaro is reportedly threatening legal action against YouTuber and political satirist Jordan Shanks, better known as friendlyjordies, over allegedly defamatory and “racist” comments. Shanks’s parodying of Barilaro has included imitating him with a strong Italian accent. In 2019, Shanks received a similar legal threat from then-politician Clive Palmer after labelling him a “dense humpty dumpty”, among other profanities. Shanks’s video responding to Palmer’s lawsuit has been viewed more than one million times, with a likes-to-dislikes ra ..read more

An example of 18th-century right-wing conservative commentary: 'The New Atalantis.' Transliteracies Project Years ago I discovered a shocking early English political satirist when a professor urged me not study her. Dismissing what I assumed was his liberal bias, I claimed bipartisan curiosity and dove in anyway. You could say I fell for the clickbait. What I found went beyond politics. To explain why I later stopped studying her, I said she sounded like “the Ann Coulter of 1709,” after the modern right-wing commentator. The satirist, London playwright Delarivier Manley, wrote and flourished b ..read more

If he's laughing, it's probably not at the Lincoln Project's satire. AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin The narrator in a recent Lincoln Project ad tells listeners, “In six months, COVID-19 has killed more Americans than any disease in a hundred years. Donald Trump lied about it, rejected science, and still has no plan to save Americans.” The narrator tells listeners that, unlike Trump, Democratic challenger Joe Biden has a plan for the virus, while a second voice, in the background, reads the names of some of those who have died of the coronavirus. The ad ends with the narrator saying, “On November 3 ..read more

John Lacy, a Restoration actor and playwright, satirised puritans, including in his role as Mr Scruple in The Cheats by John Wilson (right). John Michael Wright (died 1694/National Portrait Gallery England in the 17th century was what’s known as a “confessional state” – everyone was supposed to practice religion in the way the government decided. But puritans didn’t much like the way religion was practised by the Church of England. Puritans thought there should be more stress on the bible and opposed any religious practice not clearly sanctioned by it. This included everything the Church of En ..read more

Even before Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he had been providing America’s late night TV show hosts with ample fodder for comedy. These late night TV shows are the spearhead of political satire for liberal America, and many take their orientation from The Daily Show, which began in 1996. With John Stewart as host after 1999, it developed a mixture of political and news satire that became a popular genre. Following Trump’s election victory, humour was quickly seen by disoriented liberals as both a balm and a weapon. The veteran TV host David Letterman claimed that “comedy’s one of the ways t ..read more