Risteárd Cooper and Gerry Stembridge hope to skewer a few politicians in the election run-up . Shane Hegarty previews The State of Us, starting tomorrow on RTÉ.
Gerry Stembridge and Risteárd Cooper are discussing the British satirist Chris Morris. Cooper says he is a huge fan of the man behind Brass Eye and The Day Today; admires the risks he takes and his extraordinary ability to make mischief. Stembridge interjects. "It was Chris Morris who made me think I couldn't do satire any more. I really thought I'm just not young enough and cruel enough any more. There is an element to the best satire that involves the cruelty of youth. They can just be so savage. It took me quite a while to dip my toe back in."
But Stembridge did return to the well and, as he has done throughout his career, was happy to find that the satire hasn't run dry. What brought him back? "To be honest, working with Risteárd. The pleasure of a new idea and working with someone else," he says. "And I greatly admire Après Match. There were elements, while it was often about sporting matters, that had an edge about them. And I always thought Risteárd had skills that just weren't being used up. It constantly astonishes me about organisations like RTÉ that they don't see what's staring them in the face. That there are envelopes that can be pushed that bit wider . . . But don't believe we've achieved Chris Morris standard, not for a moment, nor would we want to in this context. But it would be nice to think we've made a pinprick."
The "new idea" has become a four-part television comedy, The State of Us, which starts tomorrow. About three years ago Stembridge and Cooper wrote a script, centring on the smoking ban and following a day in the life of Micheál Martin, who was then minister for health. They sent it to RTÉ. "And it sat on a desk somewhere for a while," says Cooper.
"There was literally no response for ages and ages," adds Stembridge.
"I rang up and asked somebody if they'd read that script, and they said: 'What script?' " says Cooper, laughing. "And then they said: 'Can I ring you back in a minute?' And I exaggerate not when I say that person rang me back six months later." Which brings us to last October.
"And then the way in RTÉ is that everything has to happen today," Stembridge says breezily.
RTÉ's election strategy had begun, and the pair would rather be part of that than not. Each episode of The State of Us will feature a particular politician, their encounters with the media, and various characters en route.
If you turned it on without knowing who was behind it, you could have a pretty good guess. It looks like the result of a wild night between an episode of Scrap Saturday and an Après Match sketch - although there is a more obvious hint in the fact that Cooper plays the main characters. All 20 or so of them. They'll include Pats Rabbitte and Kenny, Marian Finucane, Joan Burton, Michael McDowell, Enda Kenny, Martin Cullen and Willie O'Dea ("He looks like a joke-shop mask," says Cooper. "No question about it.") As with Après Match, each is delivered in an exaggerated, sometimes ridiculous form.
Michael McDowell features in the opening episode, addressing his eastern European nanny as if he's dealing with a truculent journalist. McDowell then journeys to an interview with Pat Kenny, whose Lexus is not the only thing that emphasises his Alan Partridge-ness.
There is a dollop of daftness, but there are also moments when it strikes home. It even has more than a touch of that cruelty that Stembridge thought he was incapable of.
"The bottom line is what makes you laugh," says Cooper. "And very accurate representations of people, while they're to be appreciated, I don't think they're ultimately that funny, if you know what I mean. I think Rory Bremner is an incredible mimic, as is Alistair McGowan [in his show Big Impressions]. Technically brilliant. But very often I'd watch Alistair McGowan, particularly, and just think, what is it about this that isn't actually funny?"
Is there an underlying message behind the comedy? "I hope so," says Stembridge. "My criticism of satirical things is always that at their heart they don't have something to say. Often I feel they get the politics wrong. So I would be very anxious that we do get the politics right, that people feel that it's accurate, that we've [ captured] something about that party or that particular character.
"But that's something that works both ways, because the satire on the media is just as relevant in this. And it's where the two meet that's important, because I think that's a key question in Ireland at the moment. I'm having a rant now. You'll have to stop me in a moment. Everybody is expressing opinions. I've done it, too, but it's like there's constant talk and there's a question hanging over it. It's definitely the media's duty to probe and expose, but it's not the media's duty to just talk off the top of its head all the time and to air opinions for which it doesn't necessarily have the investigative background to back it up.
"It does seem to me that there are two great egos at work here, doing battle. And I feel we're going to have a feast of it over the next few weeks." Here endeth the rant.
Since Scrap Saturday, satire has hardly flourished in Ireland. Arguably, Today FM's Gift Grub sketches, on The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show - which don't, admittedly, classify themselves as satire - have made Bertie Ahern more popular.
"It's very difficult if you're taking the mickey out of people," says Cooper. "It's such a small country that something might start off with a hell of a bite, but you're bumping into those people all the time. People often ask me what it's like to take the mickey out of people you're bumping into five minutes later. I try to avoid it. If you're having a savage go at somebody, how can you expect them to say: 'Hi, Risteárd, I hope you and your family are well.' And I think it's very difficult to escape that kind of cosiness after a while and to continue to hammer away at people."
They filmed many of the scenes around RTÉ, which, given that Cooper was impersonating several of the broadcaster's bigger egos, had the potential for a postmodern calamity. Pat meeting "Pat" would be worth seeing. Except that the day Pat Kenny did pass by the film crew, Cooper was dressed as Marian Finucane. Kenny joked: "You'll do anything for money" - "not knowing," says Cooper, "that five minutes later I was doing him for money." Stembridge adds: "It was a bit of surprise. We were shooting outside Radio Centre. We met everyone but never met them at the same time Risteárd was dressed as them."
The slipperiest of all was the Taoiseach - how to impersonate someone so familiar and whose caricature has been drawn so finely elsewhere. They circled the problem for a while before deciding that the best way to feature him was to keep him off-screen. "It was very much in our minds, this idea of how do we get at Bertie in a way that doesn't make him even more loveable, cuddly and charming," says Stembridge.
"So we have him on the phone," says Cooper, "rather than doing it physically. It just feels very interesting to represent him as a dark figure, with a ruthless streak . . ." Stembridge comes in: "As a power broker. He's barking orders down the phone to people, so you don't have to look at the droplet eyes and big weepy face."
Have the comforts of the Celtic Tiger made it difficult to feel truly angry about the state of the nation? No, says Stembridge. "The road I hope we didn't go down is to say, sure, they're all the same. That's not satire. That's just giving up. That's just saying let's make fun of everybody. It's a question of who has the real power and what are they doing with it. And who doesn't have power and what might they do with it. It's the very important element of making people laugh with it. It's funny, but is it satire? It's satire, but is it funny? It's the balance between the two."
"You can get bogged down in scoring points and in making points all the time," says Cooper. "So there are lots of gags that are just plain silly and, I hope, are funny and have no meaning or message about them at all. And one of the things I find about Rory Bremner's programme is the fact there are all these political points being made, and they're very dense. And it's very clever, but it's not making me laugh."
The State of Us is not being made as a weekly reaction to election issues, and neither Stembridge nor Cooper is sure he would want to do that. "Technically it would be difficult," says Stembridge. "Radio is easier, because it's just voices and you can walk into studio an hour after something has happened.
"There's good and bad about just immediately reacting to the events of the week. I mean, you talk about Scrap Saturday, but people have forgotten 90 per cent of Scrap Saturday. What they remember is the threads of something that lasted across a whole series."
Finally, to an issue that may not be big on the doorsteps but that may affect the future of Irish comedy. Would a change of government be good or bad for comedy? Stembridge laughs. "That's a vital question that the people of Ireland should think about." "I think Enda Kenny would be great for comedy, actually," says Cooper. "I mean, 'the integrity party'. Come on!" "Although I must admit," says Stembridge, "nothing comes easier than making fun of Fianna Fáil."
• The State of Usbegins on RTÉ1 at 9.40pm tomorrow
GIFT OF THE GAG?
HALL'S PICTORIAL WEEKLY
Hall's Pictorial Weekly, which ran from 1970 to 1982, was probably Ireland's most successful television satire. Frank Hall led a cast that lampooned personalities from a fictional newspaper office. Pity it had run out of steam by 1982, just as Irish politics became riper for ridicule than at any other time.
SCRAP SATURDAY
It seemed the whole country tuned in on Saturday mornings to laugh at the latest antics of Charlie Haughey and PJ Mara, his press secretary. Dermot Morgan and Gerry Stembridge probably did more to undermine Haughey's reputation than the Opposition had ever managed. No satirical show since has managed to be as consistently funny or cruelly sharp.
GIFT GRUB
Mario Rosenstock's impersonations and sketches have been a feature of The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show, on Today FM, since 1999. Main characters include Roy Keane, Michael D Higgins and Bertie Ahern. Rosenstock lampoons Ahern's opportunism, but the result is affectionate - his Taoiseach has probably fused with the real thing in many people's imaginations. Worryingly for this election, Gift Grub's Enda Kenny doesn't come close to its marvellous Michael Noonan.
NOB NATION
These sketches on Gerry Ryan's RTÉ 2fm's show, which are voiced by Gift Grub graduate Oliver Callan, is a pretty shameless Gift Grub rip-off, but the humour is - how shall we put it? - broader than its Today FM rival's.
THE TRIBUNALS SHOW
The interminable tribunals of the past decade have had at least one undeniable upside: the radio enactments of proceedings by the actors Joe Taylor and Malcolm Douglas on Vincent Browne's RTÉ Radio 1 programme, which they turned into a stage show. They showed that the pervasive political reality is, indeed, Gubu.
BULL ISLAND
Anybody expecting Rory Bremner levels of satire from Alan Shortt's RTÉ skit show was sorely disappointed. Not only was it toothless as satire, but it wasn't very funny, either - a bad combination for a political satire. The programme was put out of its misery in 2002.
APRÈS MATCH
Their focus may be purely a sporting one, but it was with these sketches that Risteárd Cooper sharpened his mickey-taking technique. Masters of the uncomfortable pause (surely a nod to Pinter), the fact that these sketches sit cheek by jowl with the panellists they are mocking makes it all the more surreal. Their Billo, Gilesy, Dunphy and Chippy Brady exist in a kind of Bizarro alternate universe, saying the things their real-life counterparts might be thinking but dare not say out loud. DAVIN O'DWYER