Star Stories: Series 3

The third series of swipes and jeers at celebrity lifestyles has lost none of its energy and verve, taking a pretty much pantomime approach to the targets ripped from the pages of Heat magazine. It’s a bit of a challenge though: if the thing that you’re satirising has little respect for the people it reports on, what slant can you have if you don’t simply join in?

So, slightly too many of the gags here are simply bullying - seriously, do we really find funny the idea that somebody lost their leg in a traffic accident? And even if we do, is the best joke we can come up with that they fall over? Really? At sketch comedy school, that kind of thing would be sent back with a ‘try again’ scrawled all over it.

Satire works best when it’s done with as much affection as bile, and therefore it’s the less bullying episodes that work best - the life story of Kate Moss is more teasing than taunting (models making themselves sick is blamed on undercooked frozen food), where the representations of the likes of Johnny Depp and Pete Docherty are so ridiculous as to be unreal, and a rejig of Bono’s life’s work is read as the life of Christ.

It’s a pity, because there are some genuinely sublime jokes hidden away here, such as Stella McCartney appearing as Mrs Danvers to Heather McCartney’s Jane Eyre. Otherwise though, it all feels a little too much like kicking someone where they’re down.



Released on DVD on 27th July 2009 by 4DVD.

Written by Andrew Allen.