Hot Metal

I am catching up with this comedy show on ITV Player, it's a show that I remember enjoying from way back, though it's such a while ago that I couldn't actually recall which episodes I had seen.

I am just watching the very last episode, and there is an extremely annoying fault with the sound, that has not occurred on any other episode, it keeps cutting out thoroughly ruining the enjoyment of the episode.

Hot Metal revolves around the fictional newspaper The Daily Crucible, owned by the millionaire press tycoon Twiggy Rathbone, with its Managing Editor Russell Spam, both brilliantly portrayed by the wonderful actor Robert Hardy.

Rathbone is I think an amalgam of all of the proprietors of what is known here as the gutter press, while Spam is the same as regards their editors, by far and away the worst being the Australian Rupert Murdoch.

At the time of Murdoch's conglomerate gobbling up, what was regarded as the bastion of British journalism the Times, information of what was known of Murdoch's plans was somewhat scant.

My brother Murray came back home on a visit from Australia, he wanted me to know what kind of paper Murdoch was producing in Australia, he had brought sample copies of just a handful of Murdoch's tabloids. They were all frankly pornographic, making the News of the World, Sun and Daily Star, look positively prosaic in comparison.

But according to Murray these publications were the tamest of Murdoch's tabloids, he couldn't have brought any of the other papers through customs, with being accused of importing obscene literature.

Hot Metal is frankly a brilliant satire and expose of not simply the gutter press, but indeed the entire newspaper industry itself, frankly the other section of the press that claims the more high ground, such as the Daily, Express, and Telegraph, are equally reprehensible.

Geoffrey Palmer and Richard Wilson are two of my all time favourite, actors especially in comedic roles to grace our television screens, the characters of Harold Stringer and Dicky Lipton, are absolutely tailor made for them.

This was a superb TV satire spoofing the newspaper industry. There were so many great moments that stick in the mind, particularly the wobble vision glasses, the campaign to save Happy the horse, the royal girlfriend in a porno film scandal. Too many to mention, in fact. It was written by a very talented duo (Marshall and Renwick) who had written the Burkiss Way radio show and the sensational TV series Whoops Apocalypse (they were also responsible for the far less successful film of the same name). The actors were wonderful and the parts they played very well written. It was Robert Hardy's finest hour in the dual roles of Twiggy Rathbone and Russell Spam. Geoffrey Palmer was possibly the better of the two editors (Richard Wilson got the part in the second series) but star of the show was Richard Kane as the conniving reporter Greg Kettle who made up stories if he couldn't find one and generally browbeat the public into admitting to things they had never actually done. Sheer class. Why isn't this on DVD yet?