Ballot Monkeys: A sitcom in poll position

Ballot Monkeys, a new five-part comedy series that hitches a ride with the party apparatchiks on the general election battle buses, will be shot at the last-possible moment to make sure its satire is absolutely up-to-the-minute. It’s an exciting concept that would nevertheless have most writer-directors swinging from the trees with nerves. Not Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin.

The creators of Drop the Dead Donkey, the Nineties newsroom sitcom which featured great swathes of topical material inserted at the 11th hour, and Outnumbered, which included whole scenes improvised by its mainly child actors, are not fazed by the notion of recording up to a third of the new Channel 4 comedy on the day of transmission.

“We don’t have time to be daunted or to agonise about anything,” laughs Jenkin as the pair take a rare hour off in the frantic run-up to tomorrow’s first episode. “All we know is that from now until election day it would be a bad time to have writer’s block. This process will either keep us young or make us old very fast. One of the two.”

Both Cambridge graduates, Hamilton and Jenkin have been creative partners since they worked together on Radio 4’s topical comedy programme Week Ending nearly four decades ago. They went on to collaborate on shows such as Not the Nine O’Clock News and Spitting Image, before creating the multi-award-winning Drop the Dead Donkey, which ran for six series from 1990. They now enjoy a symbiotic relationship, and like any self-respecting double act, can predict and finish each other’s sentences.

At one point, for example, Jenkin says: “We’ve heard that journalists have to pay £750 a day to get on some battle buses.”

Without missing a beat, Hamilton adds: “And £800 to get off.”

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He continues: “We’re trying to anticipate any challenges, to use a favourite politicians’ word. But we are expecting to discover new things on the day. There will be some – what did Donald Rumsfeld call them? – unknown unknowns. But whatever happens, it’ll be fun.”

The writers will be ripping stories from that morning’s headlines and weaving them into the scripts about four political parties’ campaign buses, which will be populated by, among others, Martin Frost (Hugh Dennis), a resentful One Nation Tory who feels abandoned by his party; Kevin Sturridge (Ben Miller), a Lib-Dem battered and bruised by five years of Coalition Government with the Tories; Melanie Buck (Kathleen Rose Perkins, Episodes), an American spin doctor advising Labour and given to empty political mantras; and Kate Standen (Sarah Hadland, Miranda), a Ukip office-support manager with inflated ideas of her own importance.

Dennis has a lot of experience of working with Hamilton and Jenkin – he starred in five series of Outnumbered – but even he admits to butterflies about Ballot Monkeys. “You’d be silly not to be nervous. If you thought, ‘I’ll be great,’ you’d be mad. That way disaster lies. This is a particularly scary show. It’ll be enormously difficult to pull off, but knowing Andy and Guy, I’m sure they can do it.”

The writers are not worried about a potential lack of material. Every day will no doubt throw up stories of the “you couldn’t make it up” variety.

As part of their research for Ballot Monkeys, Hamilton and Jenkin talked to party workers about what the atmosphere is like on the election battle buses. “More than one of them drew the analogy with supporting a mediocre football team,” says Hamilton. “You sit there and swear at the manager and curse the players for their incompetence, but you still go back next week. Our characters are like that. They spend a lot of time moaning about the leadership. They will be naming politicians and saying, ‘Jesus, what on earth possessed him to do that?’ Viewers will be seeing our characters commenting on and complaining about stuff they’ve just watched on the news.”

The battle-bus setting also provides the prerequisite for so many memorable sitcoms: claustrophobia. Think Porridge or The Royle Family. “Many of the best sitcoms are about people trapped together,” says Jenkin. “Look at Steptoe and Son. If you describe that, it sounds like Ingmar Bergman.”

Hamilton adds: “Our characters are trapped together with a shared objective but lots of tensions. The claustrophobia heightens everything and throws the psychology of the characters into intense, high relief. It’s the perfect setting for a sitcom because conflict is comedy. There is also a hierarchy on the buses, which is another comic staple. Funnily enough, our original working title was On the Campaign Buses, but only a certain generation would recognise the reference to the 1970s sitcom, On the Buses. Young people wouldn’t know what you were talking about and would look at you blankly. That happens to me a lot now.”

It will be an electorally fair sitcom. “We’re not going to single out Ukip,” says Hamilton. “We’ll be equally abusive to all the parties, as we are bound to be by the Representation of the People Act. You have to demonstrate fairness and show there has been no malice to any one party. Luckily all the parties are funny and tragic in their plights, so it won’t be hard to be balanced.

“Political satire has got to be healthier than the alternative where no one is allowed to say anything. Then you’re in North Korea.”

The cast agrees. “Laughing at politics is very important,” says Hadland. “Politicians are telling us how our country is going to be run. They represent us and make epic decisions on our behalf, so it’s crucial that they’re accountable, and there is no stronger way of making that point than through comedy. The best points are often made through satire. Also, there needs to be some levity about politics or we’d all despair, especially in the current climate.”

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Is there not a danger, though, that Ballot Monkeys, like Spitting Image and The Thick of It before it, will exacerbate the prevailing sense of cynicism about politicians? “Politicians themselves have done the most to contribute to that cynicism,” argues Jenkin.

“If you hear them clearly not answering the question in interview after interview or trotting out things they and the interviewer know to be false about balancing the books and finding efficiencies and cutting red tape, it’s very hard to turn the guns on us. We’re merely reflecting the popular mood of cynicism rather than creating it.”

For all that, the makers of Ballot Monkeys do not believe their show will change any voter’s mind. “It’s not setting out to do that,” says Dennis. “It’s setting out to be the counterweight to the very earnest nature of the pre-general election period. Politicians are almost not allowed to joke, just in case the things they say get taken in the wrong way. We hope we can be the antidote to that appalling pre-election seriousness.”

There is no didactic agenda underlying Ballot Monkeys. “What will viewers learn from this show?” Jenkin wonders. “They may learn you should never make a topical comedy show that you record on the day of transmission, but I hope not. We’re not Ben Jonson, trying to cure humanity through our comedy.”

“We gave up on that about 40 years ago,” chips in Hamilton. “First and foremost, we always want people to enjoy our shows and laugh. But if we also manage to provoke some thought along the way, that would be great – even if that thought is, ‘I fancy a biscuit now’.”

‘Ballot Monkeys’ starts Monday April 20 on Channel 4