Sacha Baron Cohen's Anti-Trump Project Will Be A Weekly Series Aimed At America

By Andrew Roberts | TV | July 8, 2018 |

By Andrew Roberts | TV | July 8, 2018 |

So Sacha Baron Cohen’s July 4th tease has been revealed to be the first salvo from a new series on Showtime. The network isn’t a stranger to the political realm thanks to Stephen Colbert’s super depressing election night special and the political snuff film that is The Circus. Having Cohen back on television in what looks like a successor to Da Ali G Show according to Variety:

The format is said to be similar to Baron Cohen’s “Da Ali G Show,” which aired on Channel 4 in the U.K. and HBO in the U.S. Baron Cohen teased the project on July 4, releasing a cryptic video via social media that said, in part, “He’s back as you’ve never seen him before”…

Details of the project beyond Baron Cohen’s involvement are still sketchy. It’s believed that at least one or two episodes have already been produced or at least roughly assembled. Showtime declined to comment.

The show will apparently be premiering next week, but the details around the entire project remain cryptic. It is almost like a puzzle being put together by onlookers:

Vulture snapped some shots of promotional posters for the show in Brooklyn, but they don’t give too much. We might actually have a glimpse of whatever characters Cohen will be bringing to table this time around, but it isn’t entirely clear.

What is clear is that we will likely get a new set of characters. Borat, Bruno, and Ali G became well known worldwide. Probably a bit too well known for Cohen’s liking, sending him into a period where he took on serious acting jobs or comedies like The Dictator where he attempted to play a character on and off the screen with limited success. Cohen did surprise a lot of folks by bringing Ali G back at the Oscars in 2016 — especially the folks running the Oscars who tried to block him from playing the character on the show.

He needs the element of surprise and a new set of characters. If they’re done well enough, folks will still be clueless and the humor will work out. Let’s just hope he’s not going to try to do his own impression of Donald Trump. We get enough of that from late night and the results are fucking sad.