The Thick of It to Veep: The weirdest times TV shows predicted real-life politics
Lydia Spencer-Elliott explores the strangest instances of on-screen dramas foretelling global affairs
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Life was, famously, claimed to imitate art in Oscar Wilde’s 1989 essay The Decay of Lying. In 2024, the same could be said about politics and pop culture, such are the increasingly blurred lines between real life and on-screen modern day political dramas.
From Brexit hints in ’Allo ’Allo to David Cameron’s pig-gate being foreshadowed in Black Mirror, here are the weirdest times TV shows predicted real-life politics, ranked by how prescient the fictional stories turned out to be…
10. ‘Allo ‘Allo – Brexit referendum
In 2023, a University of Birmingham historian claimed that British TV shows, particularly this BBC sitcom, provide a partial insight into the identity and political culture which led to the country voting to leave the European Union in 2016. He claimed the 1980s show – which centres on the trials and tribulations of René Artois as he runs a cafe in Nazi-occupied France – “ultimately spoke to the core differences between Britain and her European neighbours”.
“What lurks in the shadows is a nation deeply ill at ease with its European neighbours and itself,” he told The Guardian.
9. The Politician – California leaving the United States
When Gwyneth Paltrow’s The Politician character Georgina Hobart runs to be Governor of California in season two of the Netflix comedy drama, she promises to lead the state’s secession from the US and wins with 98 per cent of the vote.
Although one third of Californians supported the state’s withdrawal from the rest of the country in 2017, the independence movement, nicknamed “Califrexit”, has gained additional traction in recent years with 58 per cent of Californians believing they’d be “better off” if the state seceded, according to the Independent California poll conducted by YouGov.
8. The Thick of It – Ed Miliband’s omnishambles
The BBC comedy The Thick of It, starring Peter Capaldi, James Smith, Rebecca Front and Joanna Scanlan as employees in the fictional government’s Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship, has so frequently predicted real-life events, it has caused the show’s creator Armando Iannucci to question whether politicians are seeking inspiration from the series.
“It feels more like politicians copy us,” Iannucci told The Guardian in 2012 after Ed Miliband popularised the show’s phrase “omnishambles”, meaning a mismanaged situation, in a speech criticising the government’s budget during Prime Minister’s Questions.
“Jesus Christ, see you, you are a f***ing omnishambles, that’s what you are. You’re like that coffee machine, you know: from bean to cup, you f*** up,” Capaldi’s character Malcolm Tucker originally said in the show. The word was subsequently added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2013.
7. 24 – Obama’s presidency
When Barack Obama won the 2008 US presidential election, analysts partially attributed his success to the “Palmer effect”. The phenomenon was coined after the action drama series 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland, opted to cast Dennis Haysbert as the show’s fictional president David Palmer.
The BBC reported at the time that Palmer had “helped create a climate of public acceptance for the notion of a Black president”. Meanwhile, Haysbert – who said he had even been mistaken for Obama in a restaurant – added he believes he had a hand in proving “the possibility there could be an African-American president”.
6. Parks and Recreation – Hillary Clinton’s flu season campaign
During her 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton contracted pneumonia but reportedly kept her diagnosis secret from the majority of her team over fears her illness would be exploited by her opponents.
In the political satire mockumentary Parks and Recreation, city councilwoman Leslie Nope – who Clinton has been frequently likened to – continues working on a parks department budget proposal despite being in hospital with flu.
The episode, which features “quarantine” for sick people and a “government shutdown” of the town of Pawnee, was also called “a little too close to home” by the series star Amy Poehler when the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020.
5. Arrested Development – Trump’s wall
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised his supporters he would build a “big, beautiful wall” along the US-Mexico border to curb the supposed flow of illegal immigrants entering the country – despite the number of undocumented people gaining entry to the US being at the lowest level in a decade.
Three years earlier, plans to build a wall between Mexico and the US had already been made by an evil real estate tycoon on season four of the satirical sitcom Arrested Development. “The wall was my idea, it was,” Jessica Walter, who plays Arrested Development matriarch Lucille Bluth, told reporters.
4. The Simpsons – Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run
When Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign in November 2022, despite losing the election to Joe Biden in 2020, The Simpsons producer Al Jean was quick to point out the cartoon sitcom had guessed the turn in events.
On Twitter, Jean shared a still from a 2015 short that was released on YouTube, titled “Trumptastic Journey”. The mini episode saw Homer sent on “an extraordinary journey” following “a close encounter” with the former president’s hairpiece. At one stage, Homer is seen flying over a presidential campaign sign emblazoned with the words: “Trump 2024.”
3. Veep – Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential run
The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci has also appeared to make American political predictions when writing his satire series Veep, starring Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, vice president of the United States.
Following news of Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race in July and his subsequent endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, a clip from Veep went viral on social media in which Selina is seen telling her shocked team that she is running for president.
“I’m not leaving. POTUS is leaving. He’s not going to run for a second term,” she says in the video. “I’m gonna run. I’m gonna run for president!”
2. Servant of the People – Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidency
Before Volodymyr Zelensky was voted president of Ukraine in 2019, he created, produced and starred in a political satire series called Servant of the People, which follows a history teacher called Petrovych Goloborodko after he is unexpectedly elected as Ukraine’s president.
After it was announced Zelensky had won the actual presidential election with 73 per cent of the vote, four years after the show’s premiere, he walked out onto the stage at his campaign headquarters with the show’s theme song playing.
1. Black Mirror — David Cameron’s pig-gate rumour
Back in 2011, the first ever episode Black Mirror was released. “The National Anthem” ended with the UK’s fictional Prime Minister Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear) having sex with a pig on live television so kidnappers would release a princess.
Four years later, a book by former Tory treasurer Lord Ashcroft claimed David Cameron put a “private part of his anatomy” into the mouth of a dead pig as part of a society initiation during his time at Oxford University. The politician reportedly dismissed the allegations as “utter nonsense”.
Reflecting on his series’ pilot episode’s eerie future telling, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker subsequently told The Guardian: “I probably wouldn’t have bothered writing an episode of a fictional comedy-drama if I’d known. I’d have been running around screaming it into traffic. It’s a complete coincidence, albeit a quite bizarre one.”
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