President of the Republic

YLE1's political satire Tasavallan presidentti (fi) ("President of the Republic") is pretty good by domestic comedy program standards, by which I mean that the episodes I've seen have had bits and pieces in them that I've found amusing. It's scheduled to last for only six episodes and we're a month into its run, so now might be a good time to check it out if you're into that sort of thing.

It's not a knock-out, mind you. The pseudo-documentary form isn't exploited for all it could be; the show mainly consists of interviews with the main characters with only brief bits of social interaction between them included. Things rarely happen on screen; instead we see the characters talk about what happened. There are three major characters, all of whom tend to have the same or at least very similar comedic voice. The writing rarely carries the entire 30 minute episode; there are funny comments and some pretty obvious stuff thrown in for good measure.

To be fair to the makers, the predominance of interviews and paucity of characters might be down to budgetary limitations rather than artistic choices.