It's election week somewhere!

[melannen]

For awhile, when I first got into this fandom, I was afraid I was turning into a news junkie. And then I realized that I can only watch fake news, because real news is too depressing. And then I realized the only time I'm really addicted to the news is when there's a national election going on.

The problem is, I've got almost two months until the US national elections, and TDS/TCR have been on break; the British National Elections were four months ago, Parliament and HIGNFY are on break; Australia still lacks a government, but I've watched all of Yes We Canberra and the election episodes of Good News Week are taking forever to torrent; Brazil has upcoming elections, but according to the Bugle (which is, at least, back from hiatus) they are forbidden to parody them.

But you know who else has upcoming national elections?

LATVIA!

Oh, but surely, you are thinking, there is no fake news coverage of the Latvian elections. But you would be wrong! Latvia has its own fake news show, and it's called Bez Tabu, which means something like "No Taboos", and it streams free online with no regional restrictions. (Why, no, I don't speak Latvian. But if you go to about min 7 of the most recent episode, there are sheep!)

And now that you're aware of just how sad & desperate I am when I need a fix, perhaps you would like to know about some of the sources of fake news I've found that are slightly more comprehensible to English-language fandom than Bez Tabu? Hence, I give you this:

A short introduction to some lesser-known current sources of multimedia topical satire (in English).

1. The Bugle is your only weekly "Audio Newspaper for a Visual World", a podcast produced transatlantically by John Oliver (yes, that John Oliver) and Andy Zaltzman (who is at least as awesome as John Oliver, and also his 'comedy partner' in the sense that Jon and "Stephen" are 'comedy partners'. If you know what I mean.)
   
   The Bugle is, and I do not say this casually, perhaps the most perfect platonic ideal of a fake news show in the world, and everyone should listen to it. Unfortunately, it tends to go on hiatus at the same time as the Daily Show, due to John's filming schedules. Oh, and it's sponsored by the London Times, which has no idea how to run a proper website, so at the moment, the only webpage where it can be found is at (*shudder*) the iTunes store. However, you can download it without having iTunes; you just have to look at the page source for the itunes page, search for m4a files, and then download the most recent one. And then wash your hands really well afterward. (And yes, it is totally worth all that trouble.) Meanwhile, you can get near-hourly doses of high-quality fake news through @hellobuglers. The Bugle has an active fan community at thebugle, and there's a tiny bit of Bugle fic on AO3 and various fake news communities. John and Andy await your emails, and also your photographs of things that are shaped like giant cocks.


2. The Now Show is BBC Radio 4's premiere topical comedy show, starring Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt and many other people on the British comedy circuit. It is your only reliable non-Bugle source of Andy Zaltzman goodness, among much other goodness, including a weekly musical number and newsmaker guests. It streams online, internationally, from the Radio 4 website, but episodes are only available for two weeks after last broadcast, and unfortunately, they are currently off air.
   
   The Now Show did an election special series called The Vote Now Show, which was brilliant, and I strongly recommend if you can find a download/torrent. (And if anybody really wants it and can't, I can probably upload it for you.) I'm not aware of any specific fan communities or works for the Now Show, but some of its people show up in general British Comedy RPS now and then.


3. The News Quiz, currently hosted by Sandi Toksvig, is the grandaddy of all the currently running Current Events Comedy Panel Quiz Shows. (Yes, it's an entire genre.) The format, if you're not familiar with it, is that a rotating group of professionally witty people (usually comedians, but frequently someone else sneaks in) sit around in a studio, being given largely unanswerable questions and unwinnable challenges about current events, and giving them the seriousness they deserve, unless they get distracted and forget about the game format and just rant about the news instead.
   
   It is a very, um, low-budget format, but if your tame wits are witty enough, they are amazingly fun. The News Quiz is probably my least favorite of the lot, but it's still a great show, and it also streams internationally on Radio 4's website for two weeks after broadcast.


4. Have I Got News For You is probably the best known of the News Quiz's progeny, a long-running BBC television panel show. It features Paul Merton and Ian Hislop as team captains, with every show featuring a celebrity guest host, and usually one comedian guest and one real news guest of some sort. HIGNFY features several different rounds, which generally involve things like having to narrate for a news video with no sound or fill in the missing words in headlines. Unfortunately, the BBC television streams are region-locked, but conveniently, HIGNFY is enough of an institution that new episodes are generally up on YouTube within an hour of their first airing. (davidfliu and str0tsa are the uploaders to watch ATM, and str0tsa also has a fair proportion of the show's forty previous series up.) HIGNFY is currently off-air but a new series starts in October.
   
   If you only want to try one show off of this post, you should try The Bugle. If you're going to try two, the second one should definitely be HIGNFY. People slash Paul and Ian (including, occasionally, Paul and Ian themselves) as well as plenty of the recurring panellists; the fairly active fanworks community is called, due to some in-joke I haven't figured out yet, glovelove.


5. Mock the Week is the BBC's other television topical comedy panel show (don't you love the BBC? I do!) It's usually running new episodes when HIGNFY isn't, and is currently on-air, though again, you have to go to YouTube if you aren't in the UK (try MockTheWeekInHD - no, people aren't generally too worried about people finding these episodes.)
   
   MtW is hosted by Dara O'Briain, Irish comedian of awesomeness, with regular panelists (at the moment) being Hugh Dennis (of the Now Show), Andy Parsons, and Russell Howard. While it has some quiz-like rounds, it tends to be more about stand-up and improv comedy than HIGNFY is. It has its fandom at slashtheweek.


6. Good News Week is Australia's answer to the topical comedy panel show, showing on Channel 10. It's hosted by Paul McDermott, with regular team captains Claire Hooper and Mikey Robins, and rotating guest panellists which generally include comedians and celebrities (often with at least one from outside Australia.) It sort of combines the format of MtW and HIGNFY and is as long as the two of them put together, and like a lot of Australian comedy, tends to go places that seem a bit too offensive or confrontational by American or British standards. (Though compared to McDermott's youth, when he was with the punk-comedy-musical group the Doug Anthony All Stars, it's downright disturbingly sedate.)
   
   Good News Week streams online in Australia, but is sadly difficult to acquire outside it. fatherbananas has most of the most recent series of GNW up for download, but I've yet to find a consistent source. There's a mainstream GNW community at gnw_tv_fans, a fanworks community at good_news_week, and, er, daaspron, for Doug Anthony All-Stars slash, which seems to be mostly locked.


7. Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me, the oddly informative news quiz, is produced by NPR, America's public radio. It airs weekly on Saturday mornings on most public radio stations in the US and streams free online (I think internationally), and it is my salvation in the terrible, cold weeks when everything except it and MTW seems to go on vacation at the same time. Wait, Wait... is a similar format to The News Quiz, except that they have more interaction with audience members, including a chance to win Carl Kassell's voice on your home answering machine or voicemail!
   
   Carl Kassell is the best thing about Wait, Wait; he's an NPR real-news reader who is supposedly there to serve the role of announcer/voiceover guy, but his awesome cannot be contained and he quite frequently goes beyond the call of duty. He has a great, if not particularly slashy, on-air relationship with the actual host, Peter Sagal. (Whadd'ya Know, usually on right after Wait, Wait, is another NPR panel show, which is somewhat less current-events focused and more audience-participatory, but if you like Wait, Wait, you should try it. Also, Whaddya Know's host and announcer are somewhat slashier with each other, in an Stockholm-syndrom trapped-in-a-radio-station sort of way.)
   
   There's an active, non-fanworks-y npr community at nprjunkie for NPR in general, but most of the existing Wait, wait... fic I know of exists on AO3 by way of yuletide. Also, someone involved in Wait, wait... is a fan, because they have linked some of said yuletide fic on their official blog. (If you're going into NPR fandoms, be prepared for a near-total lack of creator separation. The first fic I ever posted in an NPR-related fandom got me e-mail feedback from the creator.)


8. And now for some special cases: not currently running series, but still worth keeping an eye out for:
   1. Yes We Canberra! was the election comedy coverage for last month's Australian federal elections. The streams are region-locked, but all five episodes are up on YouTube (by way of keagzta). YWC! is by The Chaser, an Australian comedy group that has done special election comedy coverage for the past several federal elections, and in the meantime has also had several topical comedy sketch/satire shows. They don't currently have any going, but YWC! is definitely worth watching if you consider Australian politics at all interesting, as is The Chaser's War On Everything, their last regular series, which ended in 2009. And it's probably worth keeping an eye out for the next thing they do (which may be another election special, if the parliament stays hung.) There's a fan community at chaserslash.
   
   
   2. The special coverage for Britain's national elections this spring was Channel 4's Alternative Election Night, a live special featuring Jimmy Carr, David Mitchell, Charlie Brooker, and Lauren Laverne. This is worth mentioning for several reasons: One, Brooker, Mitchell, and Carr are all awesome, together and separately, as was the special. Two, they've all done other fake news stuff previously and recurrently:
      
      Charlie Brooker, who started out as a TV reviewer, did a recent series called Newswipe, which brilliantly explained and satirized television news coverage, British and otherwise (try xthemusic on youtube). He also currently hosts the panel show You Have Been Watching, which occasionally takes on TV news, and was once described by Ian Hislop as the smartest person ever to appear on HIGNFY.
      
      David Mitchell is a comedian who is on pretty much every comedy show in the UK, at the moment. Fake-news-relevantly, he makes frequent appearances on HIGNFY (and was also the actor who took Hodgman's place as PC in the British version of the Mac/PC ads, alongside his 'comedy partner' Robert Webb.) He also hosted two series of The Bubble (try popgoesthekitty on youtube), a panel show in which celebrities were sequestered together for a week in a house that is completely cut off from the outside world, and then quizzed about whether a collection of news stories were real or made up. (The Bubble may or may not return for another series anytime soon.)
      
      Whenever they are in a studio together, Mitchell and Brooker flirt savagely with each other. This was first widely noticed when they were on a team together in The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year, which is hosted by Jimmy Carr, who also hosts 8 out of 10 Cats, a somewhat topical panel show involving polling data (which I will confess to never having watched. Yet. But it's on YouTube, too.) BFQOTY is a two-hour special comedy panel show broadcast every New Year's on Channel 4, which quizzes the panel about the entire previous year's current events, and is hosted by Jimmy Carr. (The various years are all up on youtube, by various uploaders.) They are always brilliantly funny, and the Brooker/Mitchell/Carr one in 2009 outdid itself, which is probably what resulted in the election special this year.
      
      And the election special was brilliant enough that there are rumours of a live weekly topical comedy show with Carr, Mitchell, and Brooker starting this October: keep your eyes peeled!
      
      Mitchell/Brooker, and Brooker fandom in general, are headquartered at brookerfic; David Mitchell at mitchellwebbfic; and they all turn up from time to time on britpanelslash.


9. And finally, those are all the fake news shows which I, personally, can vouch for. But that's not all there are! Here's a short list of other currently-running topical comedy shows that I know about but haven't watched (yet) and for which I cannot vouch:
   1. This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Canadia's answer to the Daily Show, and The Rick Mercer Report, Canadia's answer to the Colbert Report.
   
   
   2. The Panel, Irish topical comedy TV panel show, and Nob Nation, Irish topical comedy radio show.
   
   
   3. Stand Up For The Week and Russell Howard's Good News (because there's only so much British topical comedy one girl can watch in a week, honestly.)
   
   
   4. ZA News, South Africa's first great topical comedy show, which finally started last year after twelve years in development, and may or may not involve puppets.
   
   
   5. The Noose, a Daily-Show-like Singaporean topical comedy/parody news broadcast.


10. ...and that includes just currently-running, English-language radio and television programs which I have heard of, using a fairly strict definition of "fake news". If you want to expand those paramaters .... the list gets very long, very fast.

And, for the record, our glorious moderator on punditfic has told me that fic for any of these shows is acceptable on this community! (...she may come to regret that.)