Why You Should Temper Your Enthusiasm for the New Sacha Baron Cohen Showtimes Series

By Dustin Rowles | TV | July 9, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | July 9, 2018 |

I’m not going to get my hopes up too much about the new Sacha Baron Cohen series, which we now know will debut this Saturday night on Showtime (10 p.m. on your TVs, midnight EST on your Showtime streaming apps and On Demand). It will be seven half-hour episodes, and while we don’t know the name of the Cohen character, we do know that he’s secretly been filming for the last year. Some (including us) have suggested that it will be an anti-Trump series, based on the first promo.

However, there are a few reasons to be skeptical about the impact the new series may have. First off, it’s been completely shrouded in secrecy up until this last week, and if you got the goods, one ought to preview the goods unless one is relying on the mystery alone to draw in viewers. Second, it’s on Showtime. Why did HBO — which aired The Ali G Show — pass on the project? Third, the two brief clips from the show that we have seen from promos both feature an interview with Dick Cheney, and while Dick Cheney is evil, he’s also two administrations removed and irrelevant. Four, we now know the show, which is called Who is America? will “explore the diverse individuals, from the infamous to the unknown across the political and cultural spectrum, who populate our unique nation.”

So, it’s a show that holds a mirror up to America and shows us how stupid we look?

Yeah. We don’t need a mirror to understand that, and the people who don’t already understand that will look into the mirror and say, “Lookie there! I am having a good hair day, aren’t I?”

Until Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Michael Cohen, Hope Hicks, or Mike Pence show up in a promo, I’m not gonna get too excited about it.

Speaking of, here’s the latest promo, which again features Dick Cheney.