Time Trumpet

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Time Trumpet
Time Trumpet logo
Genre	Comedy Mockumentary
Creator(s)	Armando Iannucci, Roger Drew, Will Smith
Starring	Richard Ayoade Matthew Holness Adam Buxton Jo Enright Stewart Lee Jo Neary Mark Watson
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	6
Production
Running time	approx. 30 minutes (per episode)
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC Two
Original run	3rd August, 2006 – 7th September 2006

Time Trumpet was a six-episode television comedy series which aired on BBC Two during Summer 2006. The first full show was broadcast on Thursday 3 August 2006 at 10pm; a 10 minute preview had been broadcast two weeks earlier. The satirical series, written by Armando Iannucci, Roger Drew and Will Smith^[1], "looked back" on events of the first 30 years of the 21st century from the perspective of a nostalgia show in the year 2031 in a similar manner to his earlier one-off programmes 2004: The Stupid Version and Clinton: His Struggle with Dirt.

Actors and actresses played the parts of 'today's stars' thirty years on, as they looked back into the past (our near future), in Iannucci's usual surreal yet sensible style. In one scene we see 'Anne Robinson' reminiscing about 2009 when an obsession with plastic surgery - inspired by herself - went so mainstream that a Children's BBC TV show called 'Spicey Slicey' was commissioned, where youngsters write in to go under the knife live on air. In a similar scene, which parodies the off-kilter fashion trends that soon become the norm, 'David Beckham' explained why he had a vagina stitched into his arm.

Other 'older selves' played by actors include Sebastian Coe, Charlotte Church, Ant & Dec, June Sarpong, Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, Charles Clarke, Noel Edmonds, Chris Moyles, David Milliband, Bob Geldof, Natasha Kaplinsky, Prince Harry, and Jamie Oliver.

Other scenes included interviews with real-life minor celebrities (nearly all comedians), which are considered to be the stars of 2031 commentating on the events of the past. These included Stewart Lee (also appearing as 'Stu Lee', a bald version of Stewart Lee - the implication being that he was contractually obliged to shave his head, having not read the small print), Richard Ayoade, Jo Enright, Matthew Holness and Adam Buxton.

The show featured Andy Hodgson in a "spoof" home-shopping sketch. Hodgson, a sports reporter and bit-part TV presenter is a bone-fide 'auctioneer' on UK shopping channel bid tv.

In 'Honey, I Shrunk Martha Kearney' (a revamped Newsnight), Jeremy Paxman interviews Martha Kearney, now a third of her normal height, and doesn't seem to notice.

Another sketch described how the real-life Polish soap opera Pierwsza Milosc became a hit across Europe, and then proceeded to show a scene dubbed into English in a humorous way, changing the setting from Poland to Athlone, Ireland.

Other sketches included were a look back on the programme "Rape an Ape", the time Charlotte Church vomited herself inside out, the murder of Justin Lee Collins at the hands of Sebastian Coe after he revealed to him that the 2012 London Olympics were really just an elaborate hoax, and David Cameron looking longingly in slo-mo at wrinkly journalist Ann Leslie on Question Time while The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face played.

One recurring joke was that at the end of every episode there would be a "next week on Time Trumpet" clip. This would show three clips of the following week's programme, two of which did indeed appear the next week. The third clip always claimed that they would catch up with "an increasingly odd Tom Cruise" and would feature an elderly American man making bizarre claims such as to be "pound for pound the world's strongest man". These interviews never actually appeared.

The controversial third episode, which featured a mock look-back at a jumbo jet crashing into the British Houses of Parliament and an assassinated Tony Blair, was due to be screened on 17 August 2006, but was cancelled in the wake of security threats in London airports and substituted by another episode. The cancelled episode was subsequently shown a week later, without the footage of an assassinated Blair. ^[2]