Borat

Saturday

Francis Pike

Is Kazakhstan capable of transitioning to democracy?

From our UK edition

In the dramatic ‘reveal’ of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, the lead character, private dick Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) violently extracts the identity of the young girl hidden in the house of Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). Evelyn, after being beaten and thrown across the room by Gittes, explains, ‘She’s my sister and my daughter’. The penny drops and Gittes realises that Evelyn has had a daughter by her father. Incest is shocking enough in a film. When incest allegedly involves Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former president of Kazakhstan, and his daughter Dariga, the speaker of Kazakhstan’s Senate, the revelation is jaw-dropping. The reveal of this hard-to-believe accusation was even more extraordinary.

Thursday

James Delingpole

Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t funny – especially when he’s mocking the powerless

Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest series Who Is America? isn’t funny. But then, nor was his terrible 2016 movie The Brothers Grimsby. Nor was his rubbish 2012 film The Dictator. Nor, let’s be honest, were his classic original characters Borat, Brüno or even Ali G. Obviously, they had their moments: the ‘mankini’ — that bizarre, electric green, giant-thong-like swim wear worn by Borat; the classic late-Nineties catchphrase ‘Is it because I is black?’ And sure it must have taken some nerve — even in character — to explain to a clearly impatient and unimpressed Donald Trump his business plan for some anti-drip ice-cream gloves. But how often, even at his best, does Baron Cohen ever make you laugh?