Signs of comedy life in the year that defeated satire

You would think, as this annus horribilis draws to a pitiful close, that the only people to salvage anything from 2016 would be satirists. Instead, political satire has seemed rattled by events, even worrying about its own role as giggling bystander. To look at Comedy Central's influential topical comedy The Daily Show now is to see satire ridden with disbelief and guilt, trudging through a long, dark, late night of the soul.

Des Bishop's new programme, This Is Ireland (RTÉ2, Monday), wades uncertainly into this climate, unsure of itself and its purpose. Recorded live, it is anchored from behind a curved desk by a besuited Bishop, who monologues between distractingly low-quality news clips and handovers to roving comedy correspondents or interviews with straighter guests. Essentially, it's a copycat Daily Show rationed out on a weekly basis. To judge from its tentative first episode, however, lead writers Bishop and James Cotter aren't yet comfortable with rapid reaction.

“The Brits are leaving Europe, America’s Bill Cullen is going to be president of the US, and after 111 years we finally beat the All Blacks,” Bishop offers, by way of an opener, winding his way through Trump’s election promise to “drain the swamp” and hitting on a more colloquial version, with its own hashtag: #drainthebog.

Sadly, this has not trended, but that imperative suggested two possible directions for the show: either to inform and outrage, or to market a familiar brand of facetious cynicism. It seems to be sliding towards the latter. So we got the resurgence of Fianna Fáil ("like that bad ex-boyfriend you just can't delete from your phone"), the water charges palaver, Game of Thrones references that were hardly mint-fresh, and a considerable portion of the running time reserved to rail against the gluten-free industry. Still, there were signs of imagination, such as Blindboy Boatclub's brilliantly slanted meditation on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (of all things), which was a rare example of satire undermining, rather than confirming, its audience's prejudices. Trump opposes the deal, "but isn't he supposed to be the enemy?".

This Is Ireland has a four-week commitment, which sounds like a trial run, and there are reasons to be hopeful for its development. Bishop is smart, fast, informed and compassionate; he just needs a position to shoot from. Written by an exclusively male consortium, it could really do with broadening its perspective. And finally, it needs to set its sights on much bigger, fresher game than Big Gluten-free. An interview with independent TD Steven Donnelly on vulture funds lays the problem bare, when Bishop could be better tested with a more adversarial role.

“Is it super-awkward now?” he asks Donnelly about his defection from the Social Democrats, before suddenly announcing the arrival of his erstwhile colleague Róisín Shortall. It’s a gag, of course – so far the only thing the show is less interested in than combat are female contributors. But Bishop already seems to be aware of the limits of his satire and the need to push further.

“That would have been great television,” he says. Wouldn’t it?

Silken menace

And so the sun sets on Westworld (Sky Atlantic, Tuesday), an expensive, time-consuming and utterly rewarding study in obsession. It compelled Dr Ford, played with Anthony Hopkins's customary silken menace, to build an almost boundless Wild West theme park with his partner, Arnold, and populate it with sentient "hosts" who exist only to serve the ugly fantasies of rich visitors.

A similar obsession, an itch that becomes an instinct, urges some of these hosts, Evan Rachel Wood’s luminescent Dolores and Thandie Newton’s sharp-tongued madame Maeve, to follow fractured memories towards respective breakouts. In Dolores’s case, it is a move towards consciousness and self-realisation; in Maeve’s, an all-guns-blazing literal escape plan. Meanwhile, an insatiable drive guides the Man in Black (Ed Harris), a corporate shareholder, to search Westworld for a “deeper level” to the game. Rarely has a prestige HBO show mirrored its audience so knowingly or so skilfully.

Westworld shows you "who you really are", Jimmi Simpson's early evangelist William enthuses, and the twist of the series is to show us who William really is: not the white-hatted romantic, but – to borrow a phrase from another of writer Jonathan Nolan's scripts – the hero who lives long enough to see himself become the villain. Westworld also shows the audience who they really are: fans who will invest time, thought and spiralling online discussions in an entirely escapist drama, gladly accepting acres of tastefully shot nudity and lavishly realised violence while also flattering themselves as armchair philosophers of the mind.

A motif of the series, a curiously designed maze that both Dolores and the Man in Black are seeking, turns out to be a serviceable McGuffin. Instead, writers Nolan and Lisa Joy manage to sustain an artful game of perspective, with a narrative that journeys as far across these ersatz plains as it does through time, something that only becomes apparent in its later episodes.

The great promise of their labyrinthine narrative is that, unlike the forced chicanes of Lost or the turgid meditations of True Detective, Westworld will reward careful attention, that its complexity will intrigue rather than bewilder and its completion will bring some satisfaction – just like that maze.

The park is a welcome, absorbing, hermetically sealed distraction from a raging and inexplicable world outside, which the park's patrons seem to be fleeing in their droves. Business here is booming "because this place feels more real than the real world". The creators of Westworld likewise have us hooked. Who wouldn't take these knotty new narratives – meticulous designed, artfully layered and cannily artificial – over the scrappy ones we're living?

Salted cuteness

Similarly, perhaps, Dan Fogelman's new dramedy, This Is US (Channel 4, Tuesday), applies itself to the screen as soothingly as a balm for a divided America. Your tolerance for its particular brand of salted cuteness will be tested from the get-go, as a title card declaims – over a wistful Sufjan Stevens track – that, "according to Wikipedia", the average person shares their birthday with 18 million people. Any kind of connection will do, no matter how tenuous or folksy, for the show to wring it for all its charm.

And charming it is, introducing us to various adorably imperfect characters on their 36th birthday, whose connections gradually become apparent. But the programme is already more divided than it seems, almost lethally cloying, then trying to thin down its treacle.

Take Randall, the black businessman who realises the unlikely plotting of his day is "like a bad sitcom . . . an episode of The Manny". (We have just been introduced to The Manny, a brainless sitcom, and its frustrated, buff, generally shirtless star.) This is Us may call itself out on such contrivances, but only so it can eat them too. A kindly, gruff doctor delivers the show's manifesto when he advises a shocked new father to take "the sourest lemon that life has to offer and turn it into something resembling lemonade". According to Wikipedia, this is not sound medical advice. As pure escapism, however, it could be just the tonic.