BBC Two is set to air what is intended to be a spoof talk-show with an animated Vladimir Putin as the host. The UK broadcaster has so far ordered two pilot episodes of the talk show, titled “Tonight With Vladimir Putin”, featuring a computer-generated representation of the Russian president interviewing human guests.
“Everybody’s favourite bear-wrestling global strongman, Vladimir Putin, has finally achieved his ultimate goal: a chat-show on the BBC”, the BBC said in the show’s announcement.
The first guest is slated to be Alistair Campbell, a former high-ranking political spin doctor in the UK, while other interviewees will be selected from the domain of British showbiz.
The news has sparked a vivid debate on Twitter, with one Internet user suggesting that the talk show will be loved at home for confirming the country’s “growing influence abroad”:
“A chat show hosted by Putin would probably be the best thing on bbc”, another butted in.
… whereas a different Twitterian, The Guardian and WaPa contributor James Ball, having scrutinised BBC’s press release, acknowledged that the chat show “sounds so much worse than he had imagined it could be”:
“Who the f*** commissioned this?” Ball asked emotionally, showing his disgust at the show now in the making.
“More propaganda from the BBC”, another netizen issued a disparaging remark, while another commenter seemed to be little impressed about the distinctly “left-leaning” BBC and assumed it would be highly politically correct:
Another went as far as to call out the soon-to-air show as “racist crap”:
“Television in its death throes”, another stated resolutely, in a nod to many other netizens.
Hilarious remarks and a plethora of laughable memes arrived alongside the blatant criticism, with one bringing up the extraordinarily poor CGI production quality:
One netizen even picked up on the incorrectly chosen accent for the Russian president:
Some couldn’t help dwelling on British taxpayers’ money going for this “crap”: