Kieran Hodgson: Voice of America ★★★★★

A show entitled Voice of America is likely automatically to conjure up the current, much-reviled incumbent of the White House – but multi-award nominee Kieran Hodgson insists that his show should be a Trump-free zone, that the 47th President of the USA has drowned out other authentic voices of America. “Let Culshaw shine for once,” he wryly insists.

If this is sounding rather mainstream for a comedian whose previous autobiographical shows have been accessibly esoteric forays into the worlds of Mahler in Maestro, his cycling hero in Lance and European politics in 75, fear not. Hodgson’s stories continue to weave the personal and the political so skilfully, it’s impossible to define where one ends and the other begins.

Voice of America is about his lifelong obsession with America. By his own admission, Hodgson was always a “voices guy”. Doing a Margaret Thatcher impression at a four-year-old’s birthday party – “Many happy returns of the day, young man—now, why are you crying?” – is hilarious. Listening to the voices of The Simpsons as he grew up spurred on his talent for mimicry. When his YouTube ”bad TV impressions” go viral, his American agent lands him a role in the $220 million superhero movie, The Flash – a film whose box office was somewhat damaged, Hodgson suggests, when its star (Ezra Miller) “went on an interstate crime spree.” Playing an American coffee shop barista, what should have been two easy days of filming in the backlot of Warner Bros studios (in Watford) becomes something of an existential crisis when one of the producers suggests that his American accent is no good. The comedian has to confront the notion that his failure to land an acceptable accent might be symbolic of his growing disenchantment with the country which he once admired. To quote the show’s subtitle, “America, what happened, man?”

This begins a comedic odyssey that is both cultural and personal. British-themed pubs in the States, rhotic letter Rs, Bushisms, his parents’ revulsion at “American rubbish” and mixtapes are amongst the many laugh-out-loud moments alighted upon and viewed through Hodgson’s self-confessed “early retirement personality”. As a comic, Hodgson has charm, affability and self-effacement that can occlude his fierce intelligence and a dexterity to pull such diverse elements together into a cohesive and thoughtful whole.

Without giving anything away, the end of Voice of America manages to be both inevitable and shocking. And with this show, Kieran Hodgson‘s voice remains unique and compelling.