BBC Two announces brand new chat show hosted by Vladimir Putin
David Farnor | On 22, May 2019
Everybody’s favourite bear-wrestling global strongman Vladimir Putin has finally achieved his ultimate goal – a chat-show on the BBC.
Forget global politics: landing two pilot episodes on BBC Two of his soon to be world-famous chat show marks the ultimate victory for Vlad, leader of the free world. Tonight With Vladimir Putin is a semi-scripted comedy chat-show format – with a significant twist. In a television first, ground-breaking live VFX, created using performance capture technology, developed by creative studio Framestore, enables a 3D digital cartoon of Putin to walk around and sit behind the desk, interviewing real human guests in front of a studio audience, all in real-time. Think Spitting Image meets This Time with Alan Partridge meets that cartoon episode of Black Mirror.
The first guest in Episode 1 is Alastair Campbell, whom Vlad warmly thanks for his part in making such a mess of things, and then June Sarpong discusses her career highs and lows… after which Vlad forces her to play a game of Diversity Challenge.
In Episode 2, Vlad asks his first guest the same question he asked at the production meeting: “Who is Joe Swash?” before trying to get his head around feminism with Guilty Feminist podcaster, Deborah Frances-White.
Created by Jasper Gibson (The Poke), Joel Veitch (Rathergood.com) and Simon Whalley (Framestore), Tonight With Vladimir Putin was produced by Phil McIntyre Television and Framestore for BBC Two. Vladimir Putin is written and performed by Natt Tapley.